Yusheng Li

This paper focuses on three main parts of the newly-excavated tomb No. 2 in Poliu village, Xianyang city, including the identity and date of the tomb owner, pottery figures of musicians and the distribution of funeral objects in tomb chamber. The ‘Mistress of Xiling District Marquis’ inscribed on the seal may refer to the wife of Jiang Chong’er who was the subordinated general of Chen’an and finally killed in Longcheng in the end of Western Jin Dynasty, the date of this tomb could be more specific to be the beginning of Former Qin or even earlier. The musical pottery figures situated along the eastern wall should be an expression of private performing musicians raised by powerful families, whose composition corresponds to the Qingshang Three Modes popular after the Han and Western Jin Dynasties. The distribution of funeral objects is affected by the possible sacrifice activities once held in the tomb chamber.

This paper focuses on a newly collected golden plate from Datong Museum, Shanxi Province. The hammered image on the bottom shows a chariot pulled by two Centaurs, on which Dionysus and Heracles stand side by side with drinking vessels in hands. The theme of the image should be “The Triumph of Dionysus” which is very popular in Classical world especially during the Roman times. Based on analysis of analogous findings, the date of the image on the golden plate should prevail since the end of 2nd century AD and the beginning of 3rd century AD. The plate may be produced in Bactria and was taken to the Northern Wei territory through Silk Road or as war trophy.

This paper focuses on a newly collected golden plate from Datong Museum, Shanxi Province. The hammered image on the bottom shows a chariot pulled by two Centaurs, on which Dionysus and Heracles stand side by side with drinking vessels in hands. The theme of the image should be “The Triumph of Dionysus” which is very popular in Classical world especially during the Roman times. Based on analysis of analogous findings, the date of the image on the golden plate should prevail since the end of 2nd century AD and the beginning of 3rd century AD. The plate may be produced in Bactria and was taken to the Northern Wei territory through Silk Road or as war trophy.

The ewer unearthed from the crypt of tower in Qingshan Buddhist Temple was casted by brass. Most likely it was made in the northwestern part of the South Asian sub-continent in the later period of 7th century. On the basis of integrating ancient Roman, Sasanian and early Islamic styles, the shape of the ewer is not only a mixture of different eras and traditions, but also reflects innovation. The six-face design on the belly may be inspired by the multi-headed and multi-armed gods from Hinduism, especially by the Skanda. Eventually the ewer was taken to Chang’an by some Indian or Kashmirian monks and buried in the crypt of the tower.

The Buyao Village Site is located southeast of Buyao Village in Lincheng County, Hebei Province. From July of 2007 to January of 2008, a relatively large-scale excavation was carried out at the site by the Peking University School of Archaeology and Museology. A large number of cultural relics were found, including remains of the late Yangshao culture, the Pre-Shang period, the middle and late Shang dynasty, and the Han through Tang dynasties. This report introduces 4 important tombs of the Tang dynasty. The unearthed objects include glazed and unglazed pottery, porcelain, bronze, and objects of bone. These tombs provide valuable material data for the study of tomb structure, burial objects, and the customs and systems of burial during the Tang dynasty in the Xingtai area

The Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology conducted a salvage excavation at the constructional site at the Xiwali village in Weiyang district in Xi'an. The site is about 1,800 meters northwest of the Qin Epang palatial site. A total of 25 Tang tombs were excavated. Unearthed burial goods include ceramics, bronzes, porcelains, ceramic fi gures, and epigraphs. All these tombs date from the Early to the Late Tang Dynasty, and provide new data for studying Tang mortuary customs. 2017 2

This paper mainly focuses on three questions of the study of Tang tombs: the overview of existed findings, the relationship between social climate and transformation of burial practices, the operation and supervision of burial practices. On the basis of reviewing the past studies, we propose that it is possible to discuss archaeological questions such as the building process of Tang tombs and the supplement of Mingqi in the future. In the meantime, it is also very helpful to reexamine the rationality and the possible problems in the past studies through the study of operation of different cases from different regions.

More and more foreigners, who were usually called as Hu people by Chinese, started to migrate along the Silk Road and eventually live in Central Plain area after the 2nd century BC. The exotic culture coming with Hu people had continuous influences towards ancient Chinese society, relative historical discussion has always been the hotspot in the study of Chinese early medieval history. After the discovery of Yuhong's tomb in 1999, together with the excavation of Lidan, Kangye, Anjia, Shijun and Anbei's tombs in the following years, our knowledge of Hu people's lives in ancient China had been widely extended. All the tomb occupants' burial dates and foreign immigrant identities were clearly recorded by their epitaphs. These new archaeological materials, especially the exquisite line carvings or reliefs decorated on their funerary furnishings (stone coffin, couch or house-shaped sarcophagus) set in the tomb chambers, had rapidly opened another new field of medieval Hu people study, especially the iconographic analysis. In this paper I will focus on other details reflected by their epitaphs and contexts, try to synthesize them and reconstruct the operation of their funerals, which will eventually achieve some new interpretation of the mortuary activities of Hu people in late 6th century. Comparing with the contemporary Chinese tombs, two biggest discrepancies of the six aforementioned tombs, especially the four ones of Northern Dynasties (Lidan, Anjia, Kangye and Shijun), could be also observed in the absence of conventional wooden coffin and pottery figures, suggesting huge ideological and practical difference in the funeral rites. The lack of wooden inner coffin indicates the possible fact that the sponsors of the foreigners' funeral, likely their descendants who were the second or third generation of foreign immigrants, were probably still sticking to their own funerary traditions. Judging from the archaeological evidence of later period, traditional funerary rites had already been carried out during foreign immigrants' funerals at least from the beginning of Tang dynasty (7th AD), wooden coffin and pottery figures were widely accepted and used in their tombs. Therefore, the time from Northern Qi (550-577 AD) and Northern Zhou (557-581 AD) till Sui dynasty (581-618 AD) should be a crucial period for the assimilation of foreign immigrants in China. Fire altar, whether Zoroastrian or not, was actually the only visual evidence to define the deceased as Zoroastrians. In the same time, there is no reliable trace indicating once they carried out Zoroastrian funerary practices. This self-contradiction was really perplexing, therefore, the eclectic style of their religion suggests that what they believed was at least not the orthodox Zoroastrianism from ancient Persia any more. I prefer to consider the whole scene presented on the stone funerary furniture is some kind of recreation , which assembled existing themes provided by widely spread pattern book, the limited information of the occupants' life experience was just taken as the initial basis during carving the represented scene. Along with emphasizing on the relative relationship and similarities among them, despite accepting official award from the central government sometimes, we also cannot ignore the fact that most of the funerals were personalized and private. The tomb complexes were the relics of the contradictions which reflected Hu people's attempts of trying to integrate into the Chinese mainstream society, in the same time, still keeping the obscure memories of their variable religion and homelands. After the finish of their institutionalization in the Tang dynasty (618-907 AD), also because of the reinforced control of the management of funerals from the central government, these few number of isolated cultural islands were rapidly flooded by the ocean of local traditions.

This paper is a preliminary study of the molded image on the leather bag of the pottery camel unearthed from the Sui tomb at the Maopo village in Xi'an. This article suggests that the image was originated from the Dionysiac motif of the Classical World as the result of cultural exchange that spread to China via, Gandhara, along with the conquest of Alexander the Great. The elements of the image are the mélange of intersecting cultures, showing that the original design might have been created by Sogdian artisans from Central Asia. Due to the eclecticism of the image style, the central intoxicated figure has diverse origins, who could probably be, according to different condition, Dionysus, Silenus and Kubera, based on different contexts.