A Study On Common Costume And Adornment In The Northern Dynasties

Costume and adornment is compound symbol of human being material life and spirit need, which is linked closely with lots of factors such as social politics, economy, culture, appreciation of beauty, customs, etc.. Therefore, it arouses scholars' research enthusiasm from different fields. The Northern Dynasties is an era developing and transforming greatly in Chinese history. Costume and adornment in the Northern Dynasties plays an important part in the history of Chinese costume and adornment, but current study is far behind the research upsurge of Chinese costume and adornment arose from 20 years ago. Based on personage image data, this dissertation attempts to construct the temporal-spatial framework and also discusses the reason of temporal-spatial differences, together with document data and material objects included textile, costumes and adornments. Furthermore, this dissertation discusses the political variance, cultural communication and gender system the costume and adornment reflected, and also concerns its influences to the following era.The dissertation consists of seven chapters.The preface introduces the significance of this study, the history and current status of costume research, the purpose of the study, and methods used in the dissertation.Chapter one concentrates on the classification of common costume and adornment in the Northern Dynasties based on personage image data, which is the basis of this dissertation. Firstly, the author reconsiders the method of costume-and-adornment classification together with document data, pointing out that the classification should conform to the study objective. Upon this, the author categorizes the costumes and adornments into two types according to gender, but army costumes and adornments in single convenient for description, then divides the costume and adornment according to the position that human body dresses including head, body and feet part. Meanwhile, the author does a simple textual research in the process of classification combining with the historical document data. This is a comparatively microcosmic classification study in order to master the characteristic and evolution of the costume and adornment in Northern Dynasties. Furthermore, the author employs the concept "assemble" to discuss costume-and-adornment arranging.Chapter two concerns the periodization and regional distribution of common costume and adornment in the Northern Dynasties. Firstly, the author discusses the method of periodization and regionalization in the study of ancient costumes and adornments based on the preceding research practice. Then the author divides the costume and adornment of the Northern Dynasties into three periods as the early stage (from 386 AD to 493 AD) , medium stage(from 493AD to 534 AD) and late stage(from 534 AD to 581 AD). The periodization is corresponded with two great political changes which are Emperor Xiaowen moving the capital to Luoyang and disruption of Northern Wei regime. The periodization project happened to embody the consistent political characteristic of ancient Chinese costume and adornment. Among three periods, costume-and-adornment characteristics in the early and medium periods show great coherence to that of political center Pingcheng and Luoyang, but regional characteristics are greatly obvious in the late Northern Dynasties, which can be divided to four areas as Ye city area, Qing-and-Qi area, Jinyang area and Guan-and-Long area.The third chapter centers around common costume and adornment in the Northern Dynasties related with political variance. Costume and adornment was the barometer of social politics in the ancient times. Its texture, style, pattern and color must abide with the regime norm, and also embody the political changes. This chapter attempts to discuss the political variance from the dynamic process of the development of Northern Dynasties costume and adornment. There are three parts. The first part concerns the popularity of Serbi costumes in the early stage of Northern Wei regime. Part two discusses influences Tai He reformation brought to costume and adornment, including the policy, origin and influences about Tai He reformation. The third part concerns the blending of Hu-and-Han nationality costumes in the late Northern Dynasties. Finally, the author extends the contents from the angle of traditional etiquette.Chapter four concentrates on the cultural communication in the common costume and adornment in the Northern Dynasties. Costume and adornment is an important material item in human being life, whose characteristics of visualization, appreciation and universality make it easier to carry out cultural exchange including raw material, pattern, dressing concept, adornment wear of costumes. This chapter includes three sections. Section one deals with costume communication between north nomadic and Han nationality, which refers to Hu spend and Chinese spend. Hu costume factors include the popularity of trousers, both left and right sleeves, girdle diversity, but Han factors involve influences loose costume tradition brought to costumes of the Northern Dynasties, costume largess inherited from costume of Han Dynasty and Southern Dynasties. Section two sets forth the exchange between China and the west, including silk technology and style, costume pattern such as round and turn-down collar clothing, armour equipped both the horse and person, Ming Guang armour and some western adornments. The third section analyzes the influences of Buddhism prevalence in Northern Dynasties to the common costume and adornment, including draping silks, hair style, female makeup, costume exposed right shoulder on the rise and so on. In the end of this chapter, the author carries out a brief summary pointing out that cultural communication embodied from the Northern Dynasties costume and adornment shows the exchange between the north and south, the east and west, and also analyzes the particularity in the exchange process of costume and adornment briefly.Chapter five is gender study on common costume and adornment in the Northern Dynasties. Clothes and ornaments is an important symbol to gender division, and gender is also an significant standard to classify ancient costume and adornment. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out gender study on common costume and adornment of the Northern Dynasties. The author attempts to discuss the gender issue in a dynamic angle. Firstly, the author choose some working procedure such as weaving, dying, tailoring and sewing to discuss women's laboring, which reflects the gender division pattern the men plough and the women weave in the period of Northern Dynasties. Secondly, the author probes into gender system of the costume and adornment in the Northern Dynasties, including the costume specialization between men and women, transvesting phenomenon and the evolution of appreciation of beauty.The sixth chapter summarizes the impacts of common costume and adornment in the Northern Dynasties over Sui- Tang period. It has been a significant proposition in the study about history of mediaeval times that Southern-Northern Dynasties had great influences to Sui- Tang period. Costume and adornment of the Northern Dynasties can represent the diversification from the fourth century to the sixth century. The author analyzes this problem mainly from the specialization of men's and women's costumes, color rank system, costume fashion of Hu nationalities including men's frock-pant set, round-collar narrow-sleeve robes, scarf hat, Die Xie girdle, boots and women's frock-skirt, phenomenon of women dressed as men. It can be proved that the costume of Hu nationalities is more advanced than Han's, and Central Plains Area as the center of Chinese politics, economy and culture still has core Cohesiveness.Chapter seven discussed some relevant issues not expanded enough in the former chapters, such as clothes related to funeral, reliability of personage image data for studying ancient costume and adornment, design of Northern Dynasties common costumes, costume policy of regimes established by north minorities in Central Plains and the problem about some army costumes worn in daily life.The last part summarizes the main conclusions of this dissertation, points out the innovation points and problems needed to carry out further study in future.The innovation points of this dissertation read as follows. Firstly, study on the ancient Chinese costume and adornment has got great accomplishments since the 1980s, including lots of research achievements, expanding study team, the multiplicity of research methods. But there are still many shortages, especially the absence of microcosmic study. This dissertation is a case study on common costume and adornment of the Northern Dynasties conformed to the current situation.Secondly, the Northern Dynasties takes an important position in the history of ancient Chinese costume and adornment, but it is still short of systematic study so far. This dissertation, a study on the costume and adornment of Northern Dynasties, just fills in the gap of systematic study.Thirdly, with the development of archaeology, a majority of scholars already pay attention to the significance of archaeological data excavated or investigated in the study of ancient costume and adornment. But no scholar does the synthetical and systematic study on the ancient costume set off from the material data, combined with document data, especially archaeology field which is good at studying materials pays few attentions to the ancient costume study. Because of this, the author starts with the archaeological data to study the common costume and adornment in the Northern Dynasties.Finally, this dissertation is not confined to the reconstruction of material culture history as in tradition, but expounds the study from the evolution of costume to political change, cultural communication, gender division of work, burial convention, clothing design and appreciation of beauty, etc..