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３．Festival Pottery (Yayoi Period)
Festivals that prayed for an abundant rice harvest were popularly celebrated in Yayoi settlements. Items used as symbols for such festivals were Dotaku (Japanese bells made of bronze) and Doken (bronze swords). Drawings of Dotaku hung on trees, priests dressed up as birds, and soldiers wielding weapons engraved onto Yayoi pottery are thought of as depictions of festivals of that period.
However, at the end of the Yayoi Period (about 2000 years ago), people of Kibi stopped celebrating these festivals. Buried Dotaku were found on a plot of settlement land at Takatsuka Site in Okayama City and Shinmei Site in Soja City. From this time, festivals for the graves of buried chiefs became something that was splendidly celebrated. Special vases and stands decorated in red paint were made as symbols of these festivals.
