Yan

A type of Chinese bronze vessel produced during the Shang / Yin (18th-12th century BC), and Chou (1111-255 BC) dynasties. A steamer, or cooking vessel, used particularly for grain, the yen consists of a deep upper bowl with a pierced bottom placed upon or attached to a lower, legged vessel similar in shape to the li. The yen is not usually elaborately decorated. The form is derived from a Neolithic (c 3000-1500 BC) pottery predecessor and is found in the bronze art of the Shang dynasty and in that of the Chou, especially the early Chou (1111-c 900 BC).

[Yen]. The name of a fief established early in the Western Zhou dynasty of China in the vicinity of Beijing and of the independent state that succeeded it in the Eastern Zhou period. A cemetery site at Beijing and isolated finds of bronze ritual vessels farther north in Kezuo Xian, Liaoning province, are associated with the Western Zhou fief by bronze inscriptions mentioning the Marquis of Yan; other bronze vessels from both places are of Shang style and must antedate the founding of Yan. There is so far little archaeological trace of the Yan fief much later than the early decades of the Western Zhou period, when its capital was probably at Beijing. The Eastern Zhou city Yan Xiadu (‘the Lower Capital of Yan’), capital of the Yan state from 697 to 226 bc, can apparently be identified with a site at Yi Xian in central Hebei. A series of excavations carried out there since 1930 have uncovered a large city neatly subdivided into residential, industrial, and cemetery sectors and including many hangtu foundation platforms of palatial buildings. Yan Xiadu had an impressive drainage system and was fortified with very large hangtu walls. A mass burial of soldiers excavated at the city in 1973 contained a number of late Eastern Zhou iron weapons. See «ZsoTangshan. An unrelated character also transliterated Yan is the name of an Eastern Zhou state whose capital was at Wujin Yancheng.