Source: Shanxi Cultural Relics
On August 26, news came from the Shanxi Provincial Archaeological Research Institute that a Northern Wei dynasty tomb group was found in Datong, and the wooden warrior servants and town tomb beasts of the Northern Wei period were first found in the tomb named "Jia Bao". It is understood that the era at which the tomb was located coincided with the increasingly prosperous national strength of the Northern Wei Dynasty, the integration of nationalities gradually deepened, and the process of Pingcheng and Sinicization reflected each other. The excavation of the tomb is one of the important harvests of tombs in the Pingcheng era of the Northern Wei Dynasty in recent years.
Panorama of Jia Bao's tomb (taken from south to north)
The "Wooden Hall" proves that the owner of the tomb is of middle class
This tomb group is located in Yudong New District, Datong City, bordering Hengyuan Road to the west and Nanhuan East Road to the north. The tomb group was discovered from May to June 2017 by the Datong Archaeological Research Institute in conjunction with the capital construction process. After excavation by archaeologists, a total of 44 Northern Wei tombs were cleared, of which M13 has a unique shape, rich connotation, clear chronology, and the tomb owner is named "Jia Bao", which is one of the important harvests of this excavation.
Schematic diagram of the location of the tomb
According to Hou Xiaogang, deputy director of the Datong Archaeological Research Institute, the tomb is a square single-room four-corner brick coupon tomb with a long slope tomb, which is composed of a tomb passage, a Yongdao and a burial chamber, with a total length of 15 meters from north to south, and the bottom of the tomb is 7 meters from the surface. Among them, a wooden hall was built in the middle of the burial chamber, and the wooden collapse inside the hall was not seen, and the coffin was not seen, all of which had decayed and only traces remained. What is Mutang? In fact, a "house" was built out of wood, similar to the role of the rafters, because of the age, the wooden hall has decayed, but the bronze "paving head" used at the beginning of the construction is still scattered in the tomb, and also leaves some clues that can be studied for the excavation work of archaeologists.
Hou Xiaogang said that the square brick chamber tomb with the arc of the M13 in the north-south four corners is a tomb shape system that is more common since the Wei and Jin Dynasties, especially in the Pingcheng period of Northern Wei, and its popular time coincides with the age of the tomb. This tomb tool uses a wooden hall, and the hall is equipped with a "concave" shaped wooden tatami corpse, which greatly enriches the understanding of the funeral system and customs of the Northern Wei Pingcheng era, and is a precious physical material for studying the architecture of the Northern Wei Dynasty. "Previous discoveries show that the burial utensils of the Northern Wei Pingcheng period were buried with a higher status or used in stone halls, such as the tombs of Song Shaozu, Wei Chi Dingzhou, Zhang Zhilang, and Zhijiabao stone coffins; or lacquered coffins, such as the Shaling Northern Wei mural tomb, Hudong No. 1 tomb, etc.; or painted wooden coffins, such as the Zhijiabao Northern Wei tombs. However, the total amount of the above situation is very small, and civilians are still buried in ordinary wooden coffins after death. Similar to the M13 burial tool, it has also appeared in the Northern Wei tomb group in Datong Qili Village, indicating that this type of burial tool is not an isolated case in Pingcheng, Northern Wei, and should be the product of the evolution of the funerary system under the multi-ethnic and multi-regional migration and integration at that time. Hou Xiaogang said that this form of burial instrument is also found in the tomb of Di Huiluo in Northern Qi, indicating that it lasted for a long time. The practice of the back room of the front porch of the wooden hall, the slope roof on both sides, the bearing of the bucket on the pillar of the front porch, the bearing beam above the bucket and the back eaves are also found in the stone rafters of the tomb of Song Shaozu, the tomb of Wei Chi Dingzhou and the pillars of the Northern Wei tomb murals in Yunboli, indicating that these practices were extremely popular in Pingcheng at that time. The practice of setting up a "concave" glyph-shaped bed in the hall is similar to the tomb of Song Shaozu. The use of a wooden hall instead of a stone hall indicates that the identity and financial resources of the tomb owner are limited, and may be of middle class, which coincides with the situation of the decorative lead shop head ring outside the wooden hall.
Burial Chamber (photographed from north to south)
The tomb owner Jia Bao may have been an immigrant
Archaeologists found during the excavation of the M13 tomb that the tomb had been disturbed several times, and the burial artifacts were mainly found in the front porch of the wooden hall, the south and east sides of the burial chamber, including pottery, glazed pottery, stoneware, leadware, bronze, silverware, lacquerware, wood, etc. Among them was unearthed a stone stele with the inscription clearly visible and inscribed
The words "Wei Da Dai Tai he yuan year year ding wei october Xinhai Shuo ten days Gengshen Liangzhou Wuwei County Guzang County MinJia Baoming" inscription. According to the excavated stone inscription, the owner of the M13 tomb is Minjia Bao of Guzang County, Wuwei County, Liangzhou, and was buried on October 10 of the first year of Taihe (477 AD).
Stone Stele and Rubbings (Text: Wei Da Dai Tai He Yuan Year: Ci Ding Mi October XinHai Shuo: Ten Days Gengshen Liangzhou Wuwei: Jungu Zang County Min Jia Bao: Ming)
As for who Jia Bao is, it is not recorded in the Book of Wei, but according to the analysis of archaeologists, during the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the Wuwei Jia clan, as one of the famous and prestigious families in Liangzhou, each branch was more active in the political arena, and the Northern Wei period was most representative of Jia Yi and Jia Run. The Book of Wei and the Chronicle of the Ancestors of the Emperor reads: "(Taiyan 5th year) In August... Bing Shen, the car drove to Guzang... September C... Mu Qian and the left and right Wenwu 5,000 people tied the military gate in the face, and the emperor untied him and treated him with the courtesy of the vassals. Collecting more than 200,000 household registrations in the city, the treasures in the warehouse are incalculable... The general of Zhenbei sealed the capital of Ledu, plundered thousands of homes and returned... In the winter of October, Xin You, the car drove to the east, and more than 30,000 people in Liangzhou were in The Beijing Division. This shows that the Jia Bao family is likely to migrate to Pingcheng Datong in this wave of immigration. In addition, during the Northern Wei Pingcheng era, the eastern suburbs have always been high-grade burial areas, and Jia Bao was buried here, probably because this is his family cemetery, and his identity must be non-rich and expensive.
In the tomb, a stone lamp made of yellow-white sandstone was also found, with a height of 45.4 centimeters, composed of three parts: lamp lamp, lamppost and base, and carved from the whole material. The outer wall of the lamp is carved with double-layered double-petaled lotus patterns, and there are several places in the upper part of the lamppost that also engrave figures with jumping or dancing postures; the lower eight sides are divided into bas-relief carvings of dance figures, calf nose pants throwing pill performance figures, calf nose pants swallowing sword performance figures, playing Paixiao characters, freshly humble male long-sleeved dance figures, freshly humble female long-sleeved dance figures, freshly humble male drumming figures, and freshly humble male pipa figures, and the characters are separated by columns. The upper layer of the base is carved with two dragons from end to end, and the lower layer is a plain surface. Its exquisite carving and huge volume also seem to confirm the extraordinary identity of the owner of the tomb.
Stone lamp
The First Discovery of Northern Wei Wooden Warrior Figurines and Town Tomb Beasts
In addition, the tomb also unearthed two pieces of wood texture of samurai figurines and 1 piece of town tomb beast, which is the most special feature of the tomb, in the past in the Northern Wei tombs found more stone or ceramic samurai figurines, town tomb beasts, but wood is the first time to find. Among them, the samurai figurines have been completely decayed and extracted with plaster mortar infusion filling. He wears a hood, thick eyebrows, round eyes, a high pointed nose, a wide corner of the mouth, and a "eight" character beard. The upper body is leaning forward and twisting the crotch, the limbs are mutilated, and the front legs are slightly bent. The eyebrows, eyes, and beard of the face are painted black, and the rest are painted red. The wooden town tomb beast is a human-faced beast with a slightly droopy head, a high and wide nose, and an upward mouth corner. The forelimbs stand upright, the hindlimbs squat, and the front end of the hindlimbs is connected to the forelimbs. Apply red color to the face and black color to the rest of the area. It is 48 cm long and 30 cm tall.
Wooden town tomb figurines
Wood town tomb beast
In addition to the above excavations, Hou Xiaogang also mentioned other artifacts excavated in the tomb, he said: "M13 burial artifacts are rich in variety and distinctive features, and some artifacts can be used as standard utensils for the same kind of tomb excavation artifacts. Painted pottery is particularly special, the practice of applying color on pottery is seen in the Northern Wei Tomb Group M2 of the Yanbei Normal Academy, the Northern Wei Tomb of Tiancun in the southern suburbs of Datong, etc., and the decorative patterns of the clay pots and clay pots in this tomb are all popular honeysuckle patterns and lotus patterns in the Pingcheng period, reflecting the degree to which the tomb owner was influenced by the Pingcheng culture. The style of the first ring of this tomb is consistent with the head of the shop excavated from the M2 of the Yanbei Normal Academy, which is a five-petal honeysuckle with two corners of the interior, which enriches the standard of the northern Wei Pingcheng shop head. Stone tablets and stone lamps are placed on the south side of the wooden hall opposite the Yongdao, which is the location commonly used in the Jin Dynasty to place epitaph bricks, and the stone lamp carvings are intricate and exquisite, which is the characteristic of the era when the Pingcheng craft of the Taihe period before the migration of Luo. ”
The discovery of this tomb provides rich physical data for further understanding the funerary system of ethnic integration and off-site migration during the Pingcheng period of the Northern Wei Dynasty.
(This article is reproduced from the Shanxi Provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics, the author Sun Yiqiong, the picture is from the Datong Archaeological Research Institute)