Preliminary Analysis on the Usage of the Pottery Wares of the Western Zhou Dynasty at Chenjiahe Site, Shandong Province

The Chenjiahe Site is an important site of the Western Zhou Dynasty in the northern Shandong area, from which a number of important artifacts with distinctive characteristics of the Zhou culture and the native culture of the Dongyi tribes represented by undecorated li-cauldrons were unearthed. Among these, the native culture of Dongyi tribes in the Shandong area during the Shang and Zhou Dynasties is roughly equivalent to the native cultural remains of Dongyi tribes during the late Shang to the early Western Zhou Dynasties, and were from the same origin with the so-called Zhenzhumen Culture repre-sented by the Zhenzhumen Site in Changdao County and Huiquanzhuang Site in Weifang City. Despite the coexistence of undecorated and cord patterned li-cauldrons of two different cultural elements at the Chenjiahe Site, they might not have been used by the peoples of Zhou and Yi independent from each other, and more likely were used by a particular ethnic group, who were the ancient residents of the Chenjiahe Site, i.e. the Yi people who had accepted the Zhou Culture.