Ancient Han Chinese Women's Apparel Research,

As part of the basic necessities of life, costume includes every single piece of the dress and adornment we wear. Generally speaking, it has three functions: to protect our body, to prettify ourselves and to symbolize our social status. Several factors are decisive to what to wear and how to wear. Historical progression, social changes, material bases and ideology are all responsible so that we have various costumes that form a specific culture worth studying.This dissertation consists of six parts. They are introduction, female dress of the ancient Hans, female adornments of the ancient Hans, an anthropological study on female costumes, the cultural characteristics of female costumes and conclusion.In the introduction, the author gives her own definitions of costumes, costume culture in a common sense as well as in the anthropological sense. In the part of the literature review, the author gives a short summary on the functions of costumes, which belongs to the mainstream in academic world, and classifies the research and studies ever done before into three categories, namely, cognitive, applied and cultural. Based on these achievements, the dissertation is devoted to the anthropological study of female dress and personal adornment of Han ethnic group in ancient times with the help of both written and archaeological materials. Through combing out the development of female costumes in the ancient history, the author provides a corrective to the archaeological studies that attach too more importance to specific articles than to the cultures they dwell in.Chapter one gives a brief introduction to the four periods in the development of female costumes of the ancient Hans, namely, the origination, the formation, the institutionalization and the perfection, and classifies the ancient female dress and adornment into the following three types: clothes, headdress and footgear. Chapter two describes the cosmetics and accessories of the female respectively. In this chapter, female cosmetics are introduced according to its historical development that includes four periods: the origination, the growth, the maturity and the transmittance. The adornments of face, eyebrow and lip are illustrated as three parts. Furthermore, the hairstyle of females of Han ethnic group in ancient times is categorized as such six following types: long hair, short hair, braided hair, cone-shaped hair, horn-liked hair and bun of hair, and hair accessories and tools for hairdressing are also classified. In addition, accessories of ancient females are generalized into four categories, namely, ear ornaments, neck ornaments, hand ornaments and waist ornaments. The introduction to costumes of Han ethnic group in ancient times foreshadows the illustration of female costumes.Adopting anthropological theories to illustrate ancient female costumes of Han ethnic group is a pioneering attempt. Since there are so many schools and theories of anthropology in the interpretation of various cultural and social phenomena, this dissertation employs symbolic theory to illustrate "phoenix coronet", an emblem signifying the supreme social status of females, the theory of "the rite of passage" tointerpret the "red cloth covering the face of the bride", a token symbolizing the important point of her whole life, and gender theories to explain the relationship between males and females reflected in "costumes wearing in funeral and in mourning period by immediate family members according to their relationship with the dead". In addition, functionalism is adopted to illustrate females' propensity for dressing up, and cultural transformation theory is employed to expound the distinctive features of the Tang Dynasty through the analysis of the adornments of females hi that era in order to reflect the abundant connotation of the culture of ancient female costumes.Based on the plentiful cultural connotation and development of female costumes of Han ethnic group hi ancient times, the author generalizes their cultural peculiarities as four basic types: diversity...