Mortuary Culture NE Asia

"Mortuary Culture and Ethnic Politics in Eleventh-Century Northeast Asia" presented by Dr. Nicolas Tackett, Department of History, UC Berkeley
Abstract: Due to an abundance of surviving textual sources, historians of
China's Song Dynasty (960-1279) have made relatively little use of the
archaeological record. In this talk, I will introduce a database I
have compiled of eleventh-century tombs excavated in a broad region
that spans the historical boundary between the Song state and its
northern neighbor, the Eurasian steppe-based Liao Empire. I will then
show how this dataset (in conjunction with GIS) can clarify in
interesting ways the nature and impact of Song-Liao ethnic politics.