The Research On Epitaphs Of Shandong Family Members In Middle Ages

The production, prosperity and decay of aristocratic families is an important social phenomenon in middle ages, which went throughout the middle ages and had a profound impact on social development. The aristocratic families have very obvious features of the times, of which the research on it has a great reference. Which will be discussed in this article is the aristocratic families Epitaphs often refer to two aspects: tomb owner's marital status and family and cultural heritage issues. We hope to explore two aspects, summarizing, can help us understand these two factors in the development of the Families of the role played by the process.This paper contains four main parts:The first part is a brief discussion on the origin and development of Cui, Yang, Gao, Fang, the four largest well-known families, of which the continuation of it went through the Middle Ages, Since the have many family members, with the help of the patriarch system and the cohesion of clan mentality,they formed a huge interest community which predominate in many areas, and their influence of in can not be compared to the local officials and ordinary people.The second part introduces briefly the epitaph materials and the archaeological excavation. The information contained in epitaphs is very rich, such as the identity, experience, personal preferences, cultures and their family's living conditions of the tomb owners, which are likely to be ignored by official history. According to the description of epitaphs, combined with official history records, we can card the inheritance process and map their pedigree chart, all of which can make us have a visual understanding on their complex relationships of their huge families.The third part discusses the marriage between the Nobles, which is the core content of this paper. As we all know, marriage occupies a very special place in the political activities. As for the aristocratic families, this is an important tool to maintain their political status and social prestige. There are numerous members in aristocratic families, with various marital status, and the most fundamental principles is that the personal marriage must serves for the family interests. In other words, the marriage in the Epitaph mostly contains political factors. We sorted out the marriages that appear in the epitaphs and the historical literature, with the transverse and longitudinal comparison of the different branches of the family characteristics and different periods of the marriage, that can make us have a general understanding on the political status of marriage and family status relations.All of that can describe how important the role is of the marriage issues in aristocratic families development.The fourth part describes family tradition and family learning of the four major families, these two factors are the main components of the official Family culture, and also the major driving forces which maintain the stable development of Gentry family. The initial rise originals from superior cultural qualities of the individuals, and in the continuation of the process, cultural factors are an important source to the family's social status and social prestige. With a heavy status and prestige that accumulated by the family culture, they obtain the surviving initiatives in this changing medieval times situation, therefore, not only the whole social cultural heritage and development, but also the survival and continuation of a single family, the Nobles of their family culture undoubtedly deserves a high evaluation.