Fabricating life out of death: Sixth-century funerary monuments and the negotiation of cultural traditions (China).

摘要

This dissertation explores Northern Dynasties (3rd–6 th centuries) tombs as sites of cultural negotiation and political deployment. I examine how the appropriation, adaptation, and blending of disparate artistic practices in China during the late fifth-sixth century effected a significant transformation in the focus of the grave. By analyzing figurine assemblages, murals, architectural components, and the positioning of these features in their spatial contexts, I identify strategies with which non-Chinese rulers manipulated funerary practices to legitimize political claims or to assert social hierarchy. These artistic formulations were initially a mixture of nomadic Xianbei customs and Chinese conventions. But later, following a period in which Xianbei traditions were systematically rejected and Chinese customs actively adopted, artistic traditions became subtle amalgams of past forms recast with innovative sixth century features. Even later, as exchanges between disparate territories became more frequent, the admixture of cultural forms only grew more diverse.; Drawing inspiration from cultural anthropologists and social and art historians, I illustrate how funerary art before the sixth century served to alleviate fears of the afterlife, but was significantly reconfigured in sixth century tombs to commemorate and exhibit an individual's social station. I adopt a perspective on the political import of Xianbei traditions advanced by Albert Dien, who rejects the presumption that the Xianbei assimilated into the dominant fabric of Chinese culture in favor of the opinion that they played an active role in the formulation of so-called “Chinese” conventions.; Instead of distilling various intermingling strands into isolated oppositions, I demonstrate how the complexity of conflated and sometimes dissonant traditions could denote particular articulations of a given historical moment. I examine the tomb itself as a space of significant transformation and focus on the discrete potential of each burial component as well as striking interrelationships between the features. By further juxtaposing material traditions with highly contentious political events of the period, I position changes in mortuary practices within exchanges and aspirations of the living. My analyses of burial traditions against the perplexing backdrop of cultural self-definition amends our conception of sixth century China from one of disorder and division to one of fluid exchange.