Study On The Brick Of Han Wei And Six Dynasties Tombs In Xiajiang

The bricks with decorative patterns,with hundreds years of a development history,as one of the main construction materials of the ancient tombs,not only bear a large number of historical and cultural information,but also reflect the funeral custom and concept of some local people.Though a huge amount of decorated bricks dating from Han-Wei and the Six Dynasties had been unearthed and cleaned in Xiajiang area,the previous studies on the bricks with decorative patterns are quite limited and much less than the one with portrayal.In the premise of lack of the comprehensive studies,both of the published and unpublished literatures about the researches on these bricks were collected in this paper,and a systematically analysis and study was conducted on the bricks with decorative patterns,hopefully to draw an attention in the future research.The region of Xiajiang area and the bricks with decorative patterns are defined.The Xiajiang area starts west of Chongqing,to east of Yichang,includes the areas where the Yangtze River and its tributaries flowing through.The brick is refers to the bricks with external decoration of geometric lines or other simple grain.The bricks are generally made from clay which can be fired into bricks in kiln,and the decorative patterns are generally produced by some stamps technique.In this paper,all the researched bricks are unearthed from bricks-constructed tombs of Han-Wei and Six Dynasties from Xiajiang Area.Combing with the traditional brick-firing technique and previous studies,the producing technology of the bricks with decorative patterns was summarized.According to the archeological documents,a stastic was firstly made basing on the colour,type,specification(shape,size)of the bricks unearthed from the tombs of Han-Wei and Six Dynasties from Xiajiang Area.The tombs of Erxianbu(Fengdu,Chongqing,2015)was taken as a case study to analyze the masonry way of bricks-constructed tomb chambers(including walls,corners),at the same time,combining with the video in Zhenjiang in the six dynasties of han tombs 71 brick tomb chamber analysis summary form of paving brick.The wall of tomb of Erxianbu(Fengdu,Chongqing,2015)was mainly constructed in the form of stretcher bricks with staggered joints;and the specification has a direct influence on the uniformity of the construction.The corner was constructed in two forms of occlusion and ab-occlusion.The floors are mainly tiled with rectangular and Mortise-Tenon bricks,in the shape of herringbone more frequently.According to the contents,the decorative brick patterns of Han-Wei and Six dynasties of Xiajiang Area were grouped into five categories,which are geometric,inscription,money,animal,and plant patterns.Among which,the most frequent rhombus geometric pattern was further classified.Rhombic patterns adopted in the highest frequency are more likely to be associated with this type of decoration is the one can be most easily made and the most acceptable.Take 5 brick-constructed chambers of Erxianbu tombs(Fengdu,2015)and three east han tombs of the Wanzhou bell tomb as case studies to analyze the characteristic of the arrangement of the patterns.The wall in the tomb of 5 brick-constructed chambers of Erxianbu tombs(Fengdu,2015)was generally constructed with the bricks decorated with rhombus or the patterns with rhombus backbone.Among which,the Decorative permutation and combination of the lower wall is more neat,while more types of decorative patterns on the behind wall and the door but with a messy arrangement.Specifications and patterns of the tomb bricks largely affected the overall effect of the tomb patterns.The three brick rooms of the Wanzhou bell tombs are arranged in a regular pattern,with the M1 and M2 tomb tiles similar.The innovation of this article is that basing on the combination of a simple tomb construction material and the decorative patterns,to make an attempt to restore the process that how the individual bricks with decorative patterns to be constructed into a complete tomb chamber.In hope to break original mindset,expand the understanding of bricks with decorative patterns-one of the traditional tomb construction materials,and provide some referential value for the future research.