About 5.6 tons of ancient coins have been unearthed from under a residential house in Fuliang county of Jingdezhen city in East China's Jiangxi province.

Ancient coins unearthed from under a residential house in Fuliang county of Jingdezhen city in East China's Jiangxi province. [Photo/jxnews.com.cn]

A villager was the first to discover these coins during the rebuilding of his old home in the Chacun village of Fuliang.

Then, the news spread, and villagers believed the place where the coins were found used to belong to a landlord more than 1,000 years ago, based on local folk tales.

Archaeologists soon came, and the excavation was completed on Oct 22. About 5.6 tons of ancient coins have been unearthed, nearly 300,000 pieces in total.

The coins could be dated back to the Song Dynasty (960-1279), making the coins more than 800 years old, archaeologists concluded.

Feng Ruqin, curator of Fuliang Museum, said the coins must have been collected by a folk organization and that the coins' value was small — it had nothing to do with the local landlord.

The follow-up work, including rust cleaning, weighing and categorizing, as well as academic research of these coins, will take two or three years, Feng said.