Shifting Memories: Burial Practices and Cultural Interaction in Bronze Age China: A study of the Xiaohe-Gumugou cemeteries in the Tarim Basin

2019 (English)

Student thesis

This study focuses on the burial practices in the Bronze Age Xiaohe-Gumugou cemeteries, north-west China, in order to understand how people constructed their social identities and delivered the social cognitions through generations. The Xiaohe-Gumugou cemeteries, as the main sites of the Xiaohe cultural horizon, have central roles for the understanding of the formation of the Bronze Age cultural groups and the cultural interactions between the west and the east in the Tarim Basin. However, current research is lacking in-depth examinations of the material culture of the cemeteries, and the contexts of the surrounding archaeological cultures in a timespan from Bronze Age to Iron Age. Through detailed comparisons of the construction of coffins and monuments, the dress of the dead, and the burial goods assemblages, this study provides an overview of the social structural development, from the Gumugou group’s heterogenous condition to the Xiaohe group’s homogeneous and mature state. Also, through relating to the results of biological and osteological analyses, and applying geographical analyses to the material, this study suggests that the early settlers in the Tarim Basin, the Xiaohe-Gumugou people have created their own social identities. Although the Xiaohe-Gumugou people might have migrated from southern Siberia or Central Asia, the archaeological material shows indications of their own typical features. When newcomers joined the society, the local burial customs were accepted and applied in a new cultural setting.