Clan cemetery of the Neolithic Age

Location: Tai'an, Shandong Province

Period: 3500 BC - 2500 BC

Excavated in 1959

Significance: The Dawenkou Culture is named after the site. It has disclosed the burial systems in the period of the Dawenkou Culture. Dawenkou Culture, based in present-day Shandong Province, overlapped in time with Yangshao culture, and can be considered one of the precursors of the Longshan Culture. 

 Introduction

Dawenkou Culture distributed in Shandong, the north of Jiangsu, the east of Henan and the northeast of Anhui. Dawenkou site has an area of 820,000 square meters, with an excavated area of 5,400 square meters. It abounds in cultural relics, boasting more than 100 ruins of tombs, house bases and kilns. 

Carved bone pot inlaid with turquoise: ornament (right, height 7.7 cm); Hook-shaped object made of river deer teeth: ornament (left, height 10.5 cm)

In the early times it took the red pottery as the main products. In its later phase, it developed a firing technology to make fine undecorated gray and black pottery. At the same time white and egg-shelled pottery appeared. It was mainly made by hand at first and later by wheel. The firing temperature was 900 to 1,000 centigrade. The surface was mostly polished. The decorated pattern was of lineation, curve, basket, circular, triangular and hollow etc.

The Dawenkou Neolithic Culture was characterized by the emergence of delicate wheel-made pots of various colors, ornaments of stone, jade, and bone; walled towns, and high-status burials involving ledges for displaying grave goods, coffin chambers, and the burial of animal teeth, pig heads, and pig jawbones.

Over 100 tombs have been excavated at Dawenkou. The tombs have many features in common; all are rectangular pit-graves, most are oriented with the dead persons' heads toward the east, and most of the bodies had deer teeth in their hands.