Burial patterns of the Chou period : the location and arrangement of cemeteries in Northern China, 1000-200 BC

Abstract

One of the most significant results of the last sixty years of scientific archaeology in China has been the excavation of many thousands of Chou period tombs. These finds have reinforced the picture which emerges from traditional textual sources of burial being an important ritual and symbolic act involving the expenditure of vast resources. This study focuses on one particular aspect of the material evidence that of the physical location of burials, to explore what this may reveal about Chou burial practices and to investigate the potential of this kind of data for the study of wider historical questions. The approach taken is to look first at the siting of cemeteries in terms of the physical and human features of the landscape, and then to focus on the arrangement of graves within cemeteries and the placing of individual burials. At all stages of the investigation the archaeological data are critically assessed and their interpretative potential evaluated. The first stage of this investigation draws on data from areas where extensive excavation has yielded a fairly comprehensive picture of the patterns of human activity. By piecing together the available information on settlement and cemetery sites, chronological changes in placing of burial grounds are observed and these are correlated with development in urban forms over the Chou period. The examination of the arrangement of graves within cemeteries utilizes the archaeological data from sites where large numbers of tombs have been excavated. This section of the study draws particular attention to the problems of assessing and dating fragmentary material evidence, and to the way in which the groupings of the dead may or may not be used to understand the social groupings of the living. Finally, the study of the placing of individual burials is chiefly concerned with examining the extent to which formulae for grave placement outlined in traditional sources may be found to have been applied in the Chou period. Show more