Sacrifice was one of the most important activities in the daily life of ancient Chinese people. Due to the limited materials found, there is little analysis of civilian sacrificial culture in spite of a large amount of research on sacrificial practices of the elite.Sacrificial pits with many broken pottery shards, common in the region of Yue culture,were found in the tombs at Lanyuanlingsite,Guangzhou. The site is dated back to the Spring and Autumn Period (770B.C.~476B.C.). In this paper, charcoal and phytoliths in the soil fill of several tombs and related sacrificial pits were extracted and analyzed. It is found that the ancient people had consciously burnt, as offerings, several kinds of plant that yielded fanshaped,elongate, rectangular or spherical crenate phytoliths. Comparison with similar findings at other archaeological sites, suggests that the special sacrificial customs of ancestors at the Lanyuanling site might have absorbed cultural practices of Miao tribes,but they may have been adapted to suit local conditions, and materials. This research provides profound information for exploring the religious rituals of ancient people. Furthermore, charcoal and phytolith analysis offers a new research paradigm to confirm sacrificial relics containing burnt plant sacrifices.