The Living Space Of Dunhuang During Tang And Song Dynasties

The living situation and inhabitancy of the residents is one of the most important researches of social history of Tang and Song Dynasties. Many materials concerning the local residents’daily life are preserved in the Dunhuang documents. Through the efforts of collecting and analyzing, combining with the Cave Frescoes and Historical Materials, it is possible to maximize the recovery of the local residents’living status.This paper, which can be divided into two parts, the city and outside the city, studies the living space of Dunhuang residents of Tang and Song Dynasties by discussing the house of the city and the house and garden outside the city. In the Dunhuang area, part of the urban residents could afford a house with one or two courtyards. However, the majority only has one or two rooms, making the phenomenon of sharing a courtyard with others extremely common. Outside the city, during the Tang, Tibetan and Guiyijun regime period, the space layout of Dunhuang area’s house and garden is the heritance and development of the previous period’s:the basic layout of the garden, house and land is generally consistent. But, owning to the land speculation and annexation during the Tibetan and Guiyijun regime periods, some residents expand their houses, gardens and the lands attached to them greatly, making the large-scale combination of house, garden and land prevalent. The materials of Tibetan period reflect that, outside the Dunhuang city, there are one-courtyard and two-courtyard houses then. However, the materials of Guiyijun regime period show that the house with a hall in front of it is popular.