Abstract: 432 cultural heritage sites and relics in Xinjiang was selected in this paper, the Nearest Neighbor Index and coupling analysis were performed to study the sites' spatial-temporal distribution and drive factors. The results show that:(1) The Nearest Neighbor Index value of sites is 0.75, and it belongs to causal distributional pattern, with the 12 causal distribution regions. These sites belong to the Northern, Middle, Southern sections of the Silk Road Bands, and the Tacheng-Altay area, and the Middle, Northern sections are the most important areas, with the proportion of 80.11%. (2) The cultural heritages can be divided into six different stages, including the embryonic stage, development stage, rising stage, boom stage, decline stage, and the peak stages.The transfer of gravity centre of cultural heritage sites distribution is Tacheng-Altay-South and Middle sections of Silk Road-Middle and North sections of Silk Road-Middle section of Silk Road " in different stages. (3) The cultural heritages has a good coupling relationship with nature environmental changes, human factor rise and decline, including climates, central regime, wasteland, Silk Road. (4) The cultural heritages sites' spatial-temporal distribution are mainly controlled respective by the natural environments and humane factors. In the early periods, the natural environment factors played a big part in it, while in the later, the humane factors had main effect on it. This is general law between cultural heritage sites and natural environments, human factors.

Key words: cultural heritage sites, spatial-temporal distribution, driving factor, Xinjiang