The Yaoheyuan site, located in Pengyang County, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, was the capital of a feudal state from the early Western Zhou Dynasty to the early Spring and Autumn Period. The site covers an area of 920 000 m², where city walls, moats, palace foundations, bronze casting workshops, and elites’ burials have been excavated since 2017. In addition, more than 150 oracle bone inscription characters have been found, documenting important historic events. The excavation of the Yaoheyuan site provides critical evidence to study the political landscapes of Western Zhou states, the relationship between the Zhou Dynasty and its northwestern neighbors, and the city layouts and cemeteries of feudal states in the Western Zhou Dynasty. Some red powders were found at 38 burials of Yaoheyuan. The practice of spreading red powder at the bottom of burials has attracted scholar’s attention in recent years. Based on previous analytical results, those red powders are either red ochre or cinnabar, both of which were important mineral pigments in ancient China. Due to its scarcity, cinnabar carried special cultural and symbolic meanings, and gradually became an important part of mortuary rituals during the Bronze Age. Identifying the red powders at Yaoheyuan as red ochre or cinnabar and further exploring its provenance can shed light on the social and economic networks during the Western Zhou Dynasty. In this study, we carried out Raman spectrometry and X-ray diffraction (XRD) on 25 red powder samples from 20 burials of Yaoheyuan. On one hand, even though Raman spectrometry is quick and easy to do, it is sometimes affected by fluorescence generated by samples; hence, it does not apply to all cases. On the other hand, XRD analysis can complement and accurately identify compositions. According to the results, most of the red powder samples were identified as cinnabar, only Sample PYN03 from Burial M4 was identified as red ochre. Based on the XRD result, we found that the cinnabar and red ochre samples were mixed with quartz, calcite, kaolinite, and muscovite, which were all likely derived from the burial context.  Previous studies suggested that cinnabar samples coming from different mines could have different sulfur isotope values. To further identify the provenance of cinnabar samples of Yaoheyuan, we selected four samples (PYN04, PYN06, PYN08 and PYN10) which were the purest among all for sulfur isotope analysis. Admitting that a few soil particles were possibly mixed into the cinnabar samples, as indicated by XRD results, we believe those minor contaminants should not have an observable impact on the sulfur isotope values of cinnabar samples because of the very low concentrations of sulfur in soils.  The sulfur isotope analysis result shows that all the cinnabar samples from Yaoheyuan had sulfur isotope values between 19‰-20‰, suggesting they were likely of the same origin. Not many sulfur isotope analysis results of archaeological cinnabar samples have been published, and most of the reported sulfur isotope values were around 20‰, with only one sample from the Yejiashan site in Suizhou, Hubei Province had an extremely low sulfur isotope value of -5.5‰. By comparing archaeological samples to those of modern mines, we could see that most of the archaeological samples might come from Southwestern China, including Guizhou, Sichuan, Hunan, Hubei, and Yunnan Provinces. Because there are large overlaps in sulfur isotope values among different modern mines, also there are large variations in sulfur isotope values within each mine, it is usually hard to pinpoint which mine the samples are derived from. Next, we examined archaeological cinnabar samples that have published sulfur isotope values by time-period. There were only four samples dated to the Shang Dynasty (from the Yinxu site in Anyang, Henan Province, and the Daxinzhuang site in Jinan, Shandong Province), and there were significant variations among those samples (ranging from 15‰-28‰). More samples were dated to the Zhou Dynasty, most of which had sulfur isotope values between 19‰-21‰, including Yaoheyuan. Those cinnabar samples potentially have the same provenance; however, as discussed earlier, many mines in Southwestern China have overlapping values, so those cinnabar samples may also come from different mines. Analyzing more samples and applying more analytical methods (such as mercury isotope) in the future will be helpful in validating current observations. In addition, getting more samples from modern mines and even archaeological ones will be essential to confirm the exact origins of archaeological cinnabar samples. The use of cinnabar in mortuary rituals had become quite standardized during the Shang and Zhou Dynasties—cinnabar is routinely found on the floor of elaborate burials. However, people may still use red ochre instead of cinnabar in some cases, such as what we found at the Yaoheyuan site and previously at the Dahekou site. Those are interesting cases for the further discussions about the social context of the use of cinnabar or red ochre. It is important to systematically examine the red powders found at archaeological sites in the future, and they cannot simply be assumed as cinnabar.