Cultivation, Lineage Settlements And Transition Of Ancestral Halls In Canton Prefecture During Ming And Qing Dynasty

Canton Prefecture was a frontier area in China during Ming and Qing Dynasty,however, there were innumerable ancestral halls and hundreds of which still alivetoday. The thesis raised a series of questions related to lineage settlements,vernacular architecture and ancestral halls, and discusses the complicatedphenomena about ancestral halls in Canton Prefecture, including the process of theshaping of lineage settlements in pace with the cultivation of the region, thedominant role of ancestral halls to the layout of the village, and the prepare and siteselection of ancestral halls, the purpose and the procedure of the construction, theorigin and transition of the form structure, the ritual and the management about theancestral hall, etc. To discuss these social-economic elements, institutional elements,technical factors and geomancy issues, the thesis combines three clues of regionaldevelopment history, institutions about ancestral halls, and the construction in SouthChina, analyzes from regional, settlement and architecture level.The first chapter defines the geographic boundary, duration and objects of study,explains the significance of the research and introduces its methodology andinstruments. The second chapter make a review of the research on the lineage inSouth China, Social-economic history and historical geography, and the architecturalhistory of South China especially about ancestral halls. All the study will contribute toreinforced the academic base of the thesis.From the viewpoint of the history of the region, the third chapter sketches thehistorical process of the development of the region, highlights the influence of theimportant events to the lineage settlement, reorganize the change of the nationalideology as well as regional literature. Thus builds the context of the research of theancestral halls in Canton Prefecture.The fourth chapter mainly focuses on the lineage settlements, its basic patternand layout, the influence from the democratized lineages and ancestral halls,especially about the comb-shape-layout. A local document which was the code for avillage layout in Foshan during Qing Dynasty is also introduces and interpreted.Based on the terminology and folk adage, the fifth chapter organizes the vocabulary and regulation for the description of the architecture form of the ancestralhalls in Canton Prefecture, and generalizes the prototypes and patterns. After thetextural research of the origin of different institution about ancestral hall sinceancient time, the chapter also sums up the transition of architecture form from earlyMing Dynasty to late Qing Dynasty chronologically.By introducing the two cases in Dongguan and Foshan, the sixth chapterdiscusses the material and professions of the construction of ancestral halls, analysesthe regional characters of the material, technology and tectonic of the constructionand structure.Chapter seven probes into the social-cultural meaning, interprets the change ofthe monumentality of ancestral halls in Canton Prefecture according to the transitionof the social condition. The rituals and daily management of an ancestral hall is alsointroduced.Through the multiple dimensions research and the analysis of local documents,the thesis gives the answers to the questions about ancestral halls in CantonPrefecture, explains the complicated phenomena about them, describes the transitionof the layout of lineage settlements and the architectural features of ancestral halls,summarizes the regional characters of the construction and the change of themonumentality of the ancestral halls in Canton Prefecture.