Mortuary practice in medieval China: A study of the Xingyuan Tang cemetery

This dissertation concerns an ancient cemetery near Xingyuan village, in Yanshi County, Henan Province. The Xingyuan cemetery was located near the medieval capital of Luoyang, in a particularly auspicious location between the Yellow River and the holy mountain Songshan. The discovery and excavation of the cemetery provided an unprecedented set of 69 undisturbed Tang tombs, permitting the study of their spatial context and their relationship to each other. Family clusters are identified with the aid of 46 epitaphs excavated from the tombs and distinctive grave good assemblages.; Of primary interest to this dissertation are the practices and customs of Tang dynasty (618-907) mortuary practices. The cemetery is a permanent landmark symbolizing the social status and moral standards of the Tang elite. The layout of the cemetery is characterized by family clusters with clear generational hierarchies. An analysis of tomb structure is important as a measure of the above-ground structures that once served as visible reminders of the Tang elite social organization.; The analysis of burial goods presented in this dissertation makes a fundamental distinction between public and private aspects of funeral ritual and the artifacts associated with each of these. This analysis is significantly informed by an ethnographic survey of funerary practices in the Xingyuan area today (included as two appendixes), where the public-private distinction is clearly visible. In the archeological data, those artifacts interred within the coffin were either used for corpse preparation or were personal items associated with the deceased. There was no significant change in these items over time. In contrast, there were important changes in the artifacts found outside the coffin, which were used primarily for public display. The most notable of these were the famous and beautiful Tang figurines, whose disappearance after the mid-Tang is a major puzzle in Tang archaeology and art history. Joint evidence from the tombs and from historical texts indicates that state prohibitions on extravagant funerals were the cause in this disappearance.