Excavated in 1977, it was found to contain a large number of texts written on bamboo strips, including fragments of the Classic of Poetry and the Songs of the South, a text on breathing exercises, a "year table" (年表) recounting historical events, a manual on dogs, a version of the I Ching (Yijing) that differs from the received one, and artifacts including the oldest known cosmic board, a divinatory instrument.

Like Mawangdui and Guodian, two other tombs from the area of the old state of Chu, the Shuanggudui find has shed great light on the culture and practices of the early Han dynasty.

Shuanggudui (双古堆, literally "paired ancient tumuli") was excavated in July 1977 during the expansion of the Fuyang municipal airport in Anhui province, China.

[1] Located about two miles outside Fuyang at the time, the site was known to contain old tombs, yet it is unclear whether the excavation was pre-planned or rushed just as construction started.

[5] The Shuanggudui tomb contained the earliest known diviner's boards (shi 式), or "cosmographs", divinatory instruments that were widely used during the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 AD).

[7] The center of the circular top depicts the seven stars of the Northern Dipper (which was considered to be a powerful astral deity), whereas the rim of both the disk and the square base is inscribed with astro-calendrical signs that helped to perform divination.

(Taiyi xing jiugong 太一行九宮)[14] The most valuable goods that were buried with Xiahou Zao had long been robbed when archeologists excavated the tomb in 1977.

[5] It took a team led by Han Ziqiang (韩自强) of the Fuyang Local Museum and Yu Haoliang (于豪亮; 1917–1982) of the Bureau of Cultural Relics in Beijing almost two years just to separate the surviving fragments.

[28] Its presence in several early Han tombs shows that the Cang Jie Pian "was, if not a common manual for elementary instruction, at least not a rare work.

[32] In the words of historian Donald Harper, this work "catalogues human curiosity about the products of nature," noting among other things that pinellia can fatten pigs and that "a horse-gullet tube can be used to breathe under water.

[34] These and other correspondences between the two texts show that the same knowledge of drugs was circulating in both the southern Chu region (Mawangdui) and the Yangzi River valley (Shuanggudui).

[36] The existence of this chronological "Table" in the early second century BCE shows that Sima Qian did not invent this mode of historical representation, as he often gave the impression in his magnum opus the Shiji.

[1] Along with similar texts found in Mawangdui, Zhangjiashan, and Shuihudi, it testifies to the widespread existence of gymnastic practices in Han times.