Beneath a suburb of Chengdu lies Jinsha, an archaeological site that has yielded a gold mask, bronze masks, jade daggers, and vast quantities of carved ivory, all belonging to an ancient Sichuan kingdom with no surviving written record. Archaeologist Agnes Hsu-Tang, director of the China Institute in New York, leads the investigation into who these people were, what they believed, and why they buried such valuable objects with their dead. The film follows excavation footage and interviews with researchers working the site, piecing together clues from the artifacts themselves since no texts explain the culture that made them. Comparisons to other early Chinese civilizations and to the nearby Sanxingdui finds help place Jinsha within a wider, still poorly understood Bronze Age world in southwest China. The gold mask and the ivory hoard anchor the story, standing in for a kingdom that vanished from history until its objects resurfaced under a modern city.