[Preliminary study on the function of potteries of Liangzhu Culture]

Liangzhu Culture is an important late neolithic culture of China, but there are different opinions on the function of some potteries of Liangzhu Culture, for example vat and Ding. In the present paper, for discussing the function of these potteries, the content of Cl, Ca and P of some shard samples of vat and Ding from Liangzhu site were analyzed by using EDXRF line scanning technology. The results show that the content of element Cl in the outside and inside parts of the bottom of vat sample is not different from that of other contemporaneous archaic potteries, and that the distribution of element Cl in the outside part of the bottom of vat sample is the same as that in the inside part of the bottom, so it is concluded that the function of vat from Liangzhu Culture is not related to the production or storage of salt, but with regard to the true function of this pottery more works remain to be done. The analytical results also show that the content of two elements, Ca and P, in the bottom of the other pottery, Ding, is obviously higher than that in vat and other contemporaneous archaic potteries, and that the content of two elements, Ca and P, in the outside part of the bottom of Ding sample is higher than that in the inside part of the bottom. So it is concluded that Ding from Liangzhu Culture is a kind of cooking ware and its main function is meal cooking.