Arrangement And Research On Wooden Figurines Unearthed From Tombs In Gaotai,Wei And Jin Period

Gaotai County is densely distributed with ancient tombs from the Wei-Jin sixteen states period.There are amounts of precious cultural relics that reflect the history and culture of ancient Gaotai,such as the painted woodwares,the fresco bricks of the Wei and Jin tombs,and the bamboo slips.Among them,the unearthed wooden funerary figurines and animal figurines inherited the concepts and customs of the Central Plains.And along with the exchange of different cultures,Gaotai appeared some local elements different from traditional funeral customs.The article sorted out the pictures and archives of the cultural relics in the Gaotai Museum,collected historical documents and applied the principles of archaeological typology to carry out classification and to summarize the characteristics and functions of various types of wooden figurines.Through a comparative analysis of the wooden figurines unearthed from the Halahezhuo tombs and Astana tombs in Xinjiang during the same period,we could find that among the wooden figurines unearthed from the tombs of the Wei-Jin Sixteen Kingdoms period in Gaotai,there were obvious traces of the blending of Hu and Han cultures and the combination of male and female servant figurines is common.Most of the animal figurines are mainly animal figurines commonly seen in people’s daily life such as domestic animals,poultry,doves,and monkeys accompanied by tomb guardian beasts,which was influenced by the funeral concept of the Central Plains,and had the regional characteristics of mutual learning and integration of various ethnic groups.The funeral custom is gradually produced and developed under a certain social background.On the contrary,the funeral wares also could restore the social and historical pictures.The images of wooden figurines unearthed from the tombs of Gaotai during the Sixteen Kingdom period were closely connected to people’s daily life and production at that time.They reflected from the side the social features of Gaotai’s agricultural development,ethnic integration,and Silk Road economic prosperity during the Wei-Jin Sixteen Kingdom period.It provided important reference value for studying the social life of Gaotai in the Wei and Jin Dynasties.