Guest Editor’s Foreword

This special issue of the journal Asian Studies is dedicated to the meaning and transformation of Chinese funerary art during the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) and the subsequent Wei Jin Nanbei period (220–581 CE). The “horizontal-pit grave,” which first appeared in the middle Western Han period, marked a departure from the hitherto prevailing design based on a vertical shaft. This new form permitted the development of several burial chambers with distinct functions––a layout that would culminate in large-scale tombs with multiple chambers arranged along a central axis and flanked by side rooms and corridors. Another feature that distinguishes Han tombs from those of earlier periods is the use of brick and stone. The new horizontal-pit graves constructed from these materials provided an ideal substrate for a variety of decorations (stamped, carved or painted). These embellishments, which began to appear together with the new construction technique in the middle Western Han period, achieved their greatest diffusion during the Eastern Han period (25–220 CE). With the rapid outward expansion of the powerful Han state, accompanied as it was by the transfer of government officials and military commanders from the centre to the borderlands, the culture of the Han people, including their burial practices and tomb designs, spread to the frontier regions. As a result of the political and social disorder that characterized the latter years of the Eastern Han period, and which was accelerated by the dynasty’s downfall, the Central Plain was thrust into a state of war and turmoil, provoking even greater migration to the remote border areas in the northwest and northeast, as well as to the southern areas.