The Research Of Burial Objects’ Placement In Western Han Tombs In The Xi’an Area

Based on the studies of small and middle sized tombs in the Xi’an Area and through the reclassification of burial objects, this thesis analyses the different objects’location placed in the tombs, summarizes its law and reveals the funeral culture of Western Han dynasty in the Xi’an Area.Regarding the burial objects, we used to classify them by typology method, and then summarize the law. This thesis attempts to adjust the perspective of research, which seeks people’s funeral ideas in those days and summarize its law through searching for the burial objects’ placement of a tomb in a certain area and at a certain age. We choose three graves of Western Han in the Xi’an area. The material comes from Longshouyuan Tomb, Bailuyuan Tomb and Changan Han Tomb. They are all located near Xi’an and have some continuity on time, which favors reproducing the culture at that time. As the material published by the reports belongs to examples, the tombs having plans are just representatives of many unearthed tombs. Consequently, we can only enumerate as far as possible the tombs matching conditions for better argumentation.The thesis presents in the introduction the time and spatial range of the research. There were not many research from the perspective of burial objects’ placement. In consequence, if we find the law from the placement of burial objects, it will not only be positive to seek the funeral culture at that time, and also enrich the methods of the tomb research, and broaden the research’s horizon.Chapter I arranges the Han tombs near Xi’an, which discovers that the studies of scholars about this area are highly rich and thorough. Nevertheless, they are not enough in-depth in terms of burial objects’placement.Chapter II begins with the studies of Shizishang Han Tomb. Through analyzing the layout of Shiwishang Han Tomb, is generated the notion of burial objects’dividing into subarea. Thus, we defined our own classification standard to burial objects, which is according to the subarea of a family before the death, divided into kitchen, storehouse and bedroom etc. Accordingly, burial objects have such corresponding categories:the category A for life, the category B for stockage, the category C for valuables in the coffin etc. Then we classify the burial objects.Chapter III analyses all tombs matching conditions in these three graves. The conditions means the tombs which were not robbed and of which the burial objects’ categories are comparatively complete. If a tomb is seriously robbed or has few burial objects, which leads to the disarrangement of burial objects or which is unnecessary to place burial objects, it is impossible to search for burial objects’placement. In this chapter, we begin with the presentation of qualified tombs; after that, we classify the burial objects by our own standard and mark them by black cycles in the plan, which makes four categories’burial objects clearer.Chapter IV analyses comprehensively this material. Through gathering statistics of each category of burial objects, we summarize that the category C is mostly placed in the coffin, the category A and B are usually separated, and the category D of which the number is limited is largely placed at the entry of tomb or its four corners. The last chapter explains the culture reflected by this law, which is a representation of funeral culture. Firstly, the subareas represented by objects are different, and each subarea has mainly its independent place-maybe it is not fixed place, but not intersected. This phenomenon correspond to the culture that the death is regarded as the life, which means people seek to construct a world before death. This culture is deeply reflected in the tomb.