China News Agency, Taiyuan, April 6 (Reporter Li Xinsuo) The Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology released the archaeological results of Shuozhou's Tang Dynasty tombs of common people on the 6th.
The burial shapes and burial wares of the three Tang tombs provide new material data for the study of funeral customs and archaeological dating in the Shuozhou area of the Tang Dynasty.
The Houzhai Cemetery is located about 2 kilometers west of Houzhai Village, Yaozitou Township, Shuozhou City, Shanxi Province. It is part of the Mayi Han Tomb Group.
The cemetery is in a key area where farming culture and nomadic culture blend.
From 2019 to 2020, the Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology and the local cultural relics department in Shuozhou conducted an archaeological excavation of the cemetery, and cleaned up more than 400 tombs from the Warring States Period to the Liao and Jin Dynasties.
Among them, there are 3 Tang Dynasty tombs, M189, M202 and M204.
Judging from the shape and characteristics of the buried objects, the three tombs belong to the middle and late Tang Dynasty.
Different from the exquisite gold and silver products and high-grade porcelain unearthed from the noble tombs of the Tang Dynasty, the burial objects in the above three tombs are simple and simple.
Take the M204 funerary tower jar as an example. When unearthed, this Ming vessel was placed in the lid, seat, and body of the vessel, but from the shape of the vessel, the lid could not be placed on the mouth of the vessel, so it should not be a set.
According to literature records, there was a shop specializing in the sale of funeral supplies in the Tang Dynasty - "Ferocious".
To sum up, it is speculated that the tower tank produced by M204 may be assembled at random when purchasing Mingji from the market.
According to the Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, from the perspective of tomb shape, the three Tang tombs are all small tombs.
M189 is a pit tomb with a vertical pit. From its scale, the identity of the tomb owner should be a civilian.
M202 and M204 are both knife-shaped earthen cave tombs with shaft-sloping tomb passages, and the doors are sealed with adobe bricks.
In the early Tang Dynasty, there was a strict hierarchy in funeral etiquette. The common people’s tombs were mostly single-chamber rectangular earth cave tombs and knife-shaped earth cave tombs.
In addition, considering factors such as the age of the tombs, their geographical environment, and the number of buried objects, it is inferred that the identity of the tomb owners of M202 and M204 should also be common people.
At the same time, the shape and orientation of the two tombs are the same, the burial style is the same, and the genders are one female and one male, which may be a husband and wife relationship.
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