[Dissertation] Funerary Lists from Early Chinese Shaft Tombs

Author:
Hui, SUN

School:
Heidelberg University

Submitted:
2019

Abstract:
This dissertation presents a new approach to the whole corpus of funerary lists from early Chinese shaft tombs (dating from the late 5th century BCE to the 1st century CE). While existing research almost exclusively interprets them as “tomb inventory lists”, I provide an alternative interpretation. Combining codicological, philological and archaeological data with archaeological and ethno-sociological theories, I argue that the lists were created as tools for short-term administration of material components (sometimes also animals and personal resources) in certain actions before the entombment.

Chapter 1 introduces the Chinese funerary lists discovered to date and offers an overview of the scholarship on the creation and usage of the lists from the early shaft tombs. Chapter 2 guides the reader through the archaeological theory of “field of action”, which I adapt slightly for my analysis of the creation and usage of the early lists. The introduction of this theory is followed by the establishment of a hypothetical model of the early Chinese funerary cycle based on transmitted texts. Furthermore, a combination of this theory with the classic ethnological concept of rites de passage will clarify the motivation of the creation of those lists. Chapter 3 presents a detailed case study of the lists from tomb no. 1 at Leigudun 擂鼓墩, the tomb of the renowned Marquis Yi of Zeng (died ca. 433 BCE) 曾侯乙. Chapter 4 introduces the perspectives of the analytical device “field of action” for approaching the remaining lists. In addition, the two latter chapters indicate that the lists considerably complement the hypothetical model of the funerary cycle. Finally, as a conclusion, the lists were no “tomb inventory lists”. Instead, they were created and used in short-term administration of certain fields of action. None of them describes the final organisational pattern of the tomb goods and most of them do not even describe the final organisational pattern of the resources in the individual pre-entombment actions. Their creation and usage were motivated by the wishes to smoothly transform the status of the deceased and the bereaved through various rites de passage. 

Therefore, my discoveries do not only contribute to the rational understanding of the funerary practices involving those lists, but also provide the basis for a fundamental and necessary reorientation in the philological and archaeological research of those lists.