# Funerary expressions on imperial frontiers: Burial caves south of the Yangzi River (2nd to 3rd century CE)

Lia Wei

► To cite this version:

Lia Wei. Funerary expressions on imperial frontiers: Burial caves south of the Yangzi River (2nd to 3rd century CE). Archaeological Research in Asia, 2021, 26, pp.100263. 10.1016/j.ara.2021.100263. hal-03409300

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Funerary Expressions on Imperial Frontiers:
Burial Caves South of the Yangzi River (2nd to 3rd century CE)

Dr Lia Wei, Lecturer, Department of Archaeology and Museum Studies, Renmin University of China.

Address Renmin University of China
59 Zhongguancun road
Haidian district
Beijing
China

Tel (mobile): +86 15011030790

Tel (office): +86 010 62513096

E-mail: liawei.mail@gmail.com

E-mail (en Chine): liawei@ruc.edu.cn

ORCID ID: 0000-0002-8503-1097

Wordcount: 14, 754 (excluding bibliography)

Keywords

Southwest China, Han tombs, Burials in Caves, Imperial Frontier, Funerary Landscape, Situational Identity

Abstract

This paper documents a previously uncharted area of the Han Empire Southwest frontier, where it identifies an overlooked type of burials in artificial caves dating to the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. Until now, this specific funerary tradition located south of the Yangzi river (Changjiang 長江) has been presented as a local effect of the centralized phenomenon of “Han tombs”. As a result, its peculiarities were ascribed to logistical constraints in technology, material and terrain. This research, instead, argues that the man-made caves south of the Yangzi correspond to a distinctive tradition of placing the dead emerging in the last decades of the Eastern Han dynasty.

The crucial point made by this research concerns the location of the burial type, which appears to systematically be distribution along secondary fluvial routes. Despite their absence in written history, minor tributaries of the Yangzi river potentially played an important role in interregional communication and trade, in a context of weakened imperial rule. Resting on a field report of two major southern tributaries of the Yangzi – the Chishui and Wu rivers, and a case study of the Qi river, a minor tributary of the Yangzi and an area of concentration of the atypical rock-cut cemeteries, a situational definition for the identity of the cave builders is proposed, in the backstage of imperial presence.

Direct field survey conducted by the author in the years 2013-2016 in 63 clusters of burial caves and the compilation of data gathered by other researchers for 562 groups of burial caves and 579 individual burial caves within these groups, shows that, far from being peripheral, the alternative burial type was practiced along a 500km long section of the upper Yangzi river. This paper highlights the typological and iconographical consistency of the alternative funerary tradition south of the Yangzi river, blooming at the end of the Han dynasty, as compared to cemeteries in the Sichuan basin and the Yangzi gorges.
## List of Figures:

Fig.1. Location of southwestern commanderies during the Han period.

Fig.2 Main concentrations of Han period tombs in the highlands.

Fig.3. (A) Outdoor and indoor views of a memorial hall along the Min river in Huangsan, Yibin city, Sichuan province. - (B) Cliff tomb in Citangpo, Anyue county, Sichuan province. - (C) Cliff tomb in Fengjie district, Chongqing municipality.

Fig.4. Schematic map of the survey area across five modern provinces, and along major and minor southern tributaries of the upper Yangzi river.

Fig.5. Dotted boxes indicating rough survey areas along each southern tributary of the upper Yangzi river in Southwest China, along the mountain belt forming the southern rim of the Sichuan basin.

Fig.6. View of Qigedong, Changning county, Sichuan province. 122-178 CE.

Fig.7. The Chishui river sites and the Xishui route.

Fig.8. (A) View of Sanchahe. Xishui county, Guizhou province. 215-223 CE. - (B) Line-carved outdoor cliff face around Sanchahe M5. Xishui county, Guizhou province. 215-223 CE. - (C) Indoor carving visible from the foot of the cliff in Sanchahe M4. Xishui county, Guizhou province. 215-223 CE. - (D) View of Shaxi. Guangdian district, Xishui county. Source: courtesy of Xishui county archaeological office.

Fig.9. View of Qikongzi. Lichuan county, Hubei province. Late 2nd century CE.

Fig.10 Map of surveyed sites along the Qi river.

Fig.11. Groups of cemeteries along the tributaries of the Qi river.

Fig.12. Minor routes (dotted lines) among major routes (grey lines) south of the Yangzi.

Note: Historical sources in classical Chinese are cited as: Title *Juan/scroll*, Page. So "*Hou Hanshu* 86, p. 2840".

## List of Tables:

Table 1. Timeline of Chinese eras discussed in this paper.

Table 2. Characteristics of the cave burials south of the Yangzi (Type 2), as compared to Han period rock-cut tombs in Southwest China (Type 1).

Table 3. Main sources of data about burial caves south of the Yangzi and their reliability.

Table 4. Methodological choices for survey in the years 2012-2017.
# 1 Introduction

This paper documents a previously uncharted area of the Han Empire Southwest frontier, where it identifies an overlooked type of burials in artificial caves dating to the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. Until now, this specific funerary tradition located south of the Yangzi river (Changjiang 長江) has been presented as a local effect of the centralized phenomenon of “Han tombs”. As a result, its peculiarities were ascribed to logistical constraints in technology, material and terrain. This research, instead, argues that the man-made caves south of the Yangzi correspond to a distinctive tradition of placing the dead emerging in the last decades of the Eastern Han dynasty. (Table 1).

<table><caption>Table 1. Timeline of Chinese eras discussed in this paper.</caption><thead><tr><th>Period or dynasty</th><th>Dates</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Warring States</td><td>480-221 BCE</td></tr><tr><td>Qin</td><td>221-206 BCE</td></tr><tr><td>Western Han</td><td>202 BCE – 9 CE</td></tr><tr><td>Eastern Han</td><td>25-220 CE</td></tr><tr><td>Three Kingdoms, Sixteen Kingdoms, Northern and Southern Dynasties</td><td>220-581 CE</td></tr><tr><td>Sui</td><td>581-618 CE</td></tr><tr><td>Tang</td><td>618-907 CE</td></tr><tr><td>Song</td><td>960-1279 CE</td></tr><tr><td>Yuan</td><td>1271-1368 CE</td></tr><tr><td>Ming</td><td>1368-1644 CE</td></tr><tr><td>Qing</td><td>1636-1911 CE</td></tr></tbody></table>

The crucial point made by this research concerns the location of the burial type, which appears to systematically be distribution along secondary fluvial routes. Despite their absence in written history, minor tributaries of the Yangzi river potentially played an important role in interregional communication and trade, in a context of weakened imperial rule. Drawing from a field report of two major southern tributaries of the Yangzi – the Chishui and Wu rivers, and a case study of the Qi river, a minor tributary of the Yangzi and an area of concentration of the atypical rock-cut cemeteries, I propose a situational definition for the identity of the cave builders for which the Han imperial presence is limited.

Direct field survey conducted by the author in the years 2013-2016 at 63 clusters of burial caves, in addition to the compilation of data gathered by other researchers for 562 groups of burial caves and 579 individual burial caves within these groups, shows that, far from being peripheral, the alternative burial type was practiced along a 500km long section of the upper Yangzi river. This paper highlights the typological and iconographical consistency of the alternative funerary tradition south of the Yangzi river, blooming at the end of the Han dynasty, as compared to cemeteries in the Sichuan basin and the Yangzi gorges area.

The following sections first introduce the available historical evidence, which remains limited but provides a false impression of a high degree of control by the Han Empire on the Southwest frontier, as well as the archaeological background of the study area. The successive empires managed the Southwest in administrative regions called commanderies, which each had their distinctive function and mode of governance according to resources and the composition of their population. The historical overview below shows how the funerary evidence studied here belongs to a moment of weakened central control by the Han. My review of the archaeological record in section 3 distinguishes various degrees of acculturation as reflected in funerary
practices evident for known Han period tombs, in relation to communication routes and the locations of identified settlements. Both written sources and archaeological reports, however, overlook the cave burials investigated by my field study, for which survey results are discussed in section 4 of this paper.

## 2 Deconstructing “Han”: Imperial expansion since the Qin, Han rule and acculturation in Southwest China

Recent studies agree in considering the status of “Han” as an exception, compared to ethnonyms used to designate non-Han groups (Elliott, 2012). Historians who documented the imperial conquest of South China defined “Han” as an identity motivated by orthodoxy and legitimation, rather than ethnicity (Wiens, 1967). Such studies saw ethnicity as defined by boundaries and contact with the “other” in line with Barth (1969), whose anthropological theories took more than twenty years to be acknowledged by scholars studying ancient China such as Wang Mingke, in his long-term study of the evolution of the exonym “Qiang”羌 on the Western frontier (Wang, 1992). The highlands of Southwest China and Mainland Southeast Asia have opened the way to a more flexible definition of ethnicity, aimed at understanding societies that did not leave traces in written history (Leach, 1973; Scott, 2009). A general trend in scholarship “towards an integrated view of Han frontiers” (Di Cosmo, 2009) looks at mechanisms of identity formation known as “sinicization” or “barbarization” found on all margins of imperial presence, with specific landscapes of mobility and subsistence staging the formative stage of imperial politics (Honeychurch, 2015). However, recent archaeological studies of ancient Southwest China tend to focus on kingdoms such as Dian (Chiang, 2012; Allard, 2015; Yao, 2015), which went through a clear process of assimilation and was recorded in written history. While it similarly departs from the contrast between lowland and highland cultures, my research focuses on the southern tributaries that connect the highlands to the upper Yangzi river, a zone of transition and contact rather than of stark contrast. Throughout early imperial history, such intermediary landscapes have been the laboratories where frontier policies were tested, and ethnicities forged. The peculiar nature of the study area requires one to embrace the complexity of local and interregional identities, an endeavor undertaken by a minority of researchers, such as Hein (2013) for prehistoric Southwest China.

The configuration of temporalities and geographies in Southwest China as found in the Han period date back to the 4th century BCE, with the arrival of the Qin in the Sichuan basin and the gradual establishment of the commandery system (Fig.1). The Warring States era Qin State fed on the fertile and wealthy Sichuan basin (Shu and Guanghan commanderies), while the Yangzi gorges (Ba commandery), in present-day Chongqing municipality, played a strategic role in extending Qin rule to the East, then under the control of the Chu state (Sage, 1992). The Qin dealt differently with the Shu and Ba commanderies in terms of law enforcement and migration planning: the Sichuan basin grew as a strong regional power directly connected to the imperial capital, and the Yangzi gorges specialized in warfare and trade as well as salt extraction (Von Falkenhausen 2006). When dealing with ecological barriers, the Qin and the Han often followed pre-existing trade routes, and established hybrid rule to deal with cultural boundaries. The king and princes of Yelang for example, who were dubbed prefects of their own kingdom, labelled as the Han commanderies of Zangke and Jianwei after Tang Meng's campaign (135-130 BCE) (Hervouet, 1964 p. 86). Under the Han dynasty, dependent states attached to the margins of commanderies, which were “largely inhabited by non-Chinese people”, (De Crespigny, 1989 xlvii-I) and officers in charge would delegate power to local chiefs. This was the first expression of a frontier regime (邊郡制度 bianjun zhidu) of incomplete assimilation.
<figure><img src="image_2.png" /><figcaption>Fig.1. Location of southwestern commanderies during the Han period, in particular the Jianwei commandery, located in between the Sichuan basin, Yangzi gorges, Yunnan-Guizhou highlands and Hunan-Hubei plain. The red shape marks the location of the survey area, which includes part of the Jianwei and Ba commanderies, and the courses of the Jinsha, Chishui, Wu and Long rivers.</figcaption></figure>

Members of powerful local clans and bureaucrats locally selected thus defended the frontier, kept peace and collected taxes. Another important actor, the “great families” (*daxing 大姓*) (*Huayang Guo Zhi* 3, p. 225), migrated southwards from the Qin period onwards and became involved in industrial and mercantile activities such as extraction or agriculture upon their arrival in the gorges and the Sichuan basin. They owned large estates and maintained private armies (Hsu, 1988 pp.220 and 225), in ambiguous relation with local administrations. In historical sources, they are alternatively presented as a vehicle for sinicisation and progress, as they helped to protect Han frontiers and presented gifts to the government, or cited along seven forms of disasters for the people, whenever their power turned against the state (*Hanshu* 72, p.3088). Such actors gained power during the last decades of the Eastern Han dynasty, under a weakening central power. In 178 CE, a market for the sale of offices was opened in the imperial capital (*Zizhi Tongjian* 57, p.1849), which extended to the whole official system in 185 CE, provoking gross corruption and extortion at the local level (De Crespigny, 1989, Vol.2 p.517-8). Government officials acted in their own interest, creating landed estates and accumulating properties (Crowell, 1990 p.204). When the government collapsed after the death of Emperor Ling in 189 CE, these groups were ready to take part in civil war (De Crespigny, 2004 p.57).

In 201 CE, the records of taxable population of the whole Yangzi gorges area had dropped dramatically to about 85% less than in the mid-second century CE (*Hou Hanshu* 19, p.3389). A large portion of the population might have simply not been taxable anymore, but this alone would not explain such an abrupt decline. Part of the settlers abandoned the Yangzi gorges area, moving towards the Hunan-Hubei plain east of the gorges, and in neighbouring regions to the west and south. Part of these populations might have overflowed into the side valleys. Other factors of migration would be campaigns against southern tribes, the last memorable one being Zhuge Liang's against the “southern barbarians” (*nanman 南蛮*) in Nanzhong (225-250 CE). Written sources report repeated uprising by groups such as the *Banshun man 板楯蠻* between 118 and 182 CE (*Hou Hanshu* 86, p.2843) or the *Wuxi man 五溪蠻* between 222 and 268 CE
(Sanguo Zhi 32, p.890; 39, p.983; 45; 61, p.1397; Huayang Guo Zhi 1, p.74 and 83-84). The chieftains, designated by the term yishuai 夷帥, resulted from intermarriage between the daxing and local populations designated in historical accounts by the term huangye 遼耶 (Huayang Guo Zhi 4, p.364), alternatively viewed as indigenized migrants or sinicized local chieftains (Bin, 2010, p.107). They formed the “hundred barbarians” (baiman 百蛮), who will later establish the independent kingdom of Nanzhao 南詔 (738-937 CE) and rule over the Southwest.

Another emerging factor of unrest in the late Han dynasty are religious groups such as the Yellow Turbans (huangshi 黃巾) or the Celestial Masters (tianshi dao 天師道) also known as the Wudoumi sect (wudoumi 五斗米). The latter established a theocracy with its own parallel territorial administration, census and tax system in the years 180s (Zizhi Tongjian 58; De Crespigny, 1989 p.185; Hou Hanshu 75, p.2435-6; Kleeman, 1998 p.68), only defeated in the early 3rd century by general Cao Cao (Hou Hanshu, 75 p.2435). To establish the seats of the dioceses, they seem to have “selected sites in the borderland where mountainous areas met the plain, preferably at the mouth of a river or on a communicating road” (Verellen, 2003 p.49). Although some parallels have been attempted (Wu, 2000), the sects mentioned in written sources can hardly be matched with the archaeological record, but they help us draw a profile of groups active in the area. Kleeman argues that the main characteristic of the territory ruled by the spiritual leader of the Wudoumi sect was its strong non-Chinese ethnic component (Kleeman, 2002 p.25), and that among its army was a group of Banshun man (Kleeman, 1998 p.74). The role of native groups such as the Banshun man, who served as mercenaries for the Qin empire against the Qiang (Zhizhi tongjian 58, p.1863), and were submitted to lower taxes (Bin, 2009 p.104-5) is not univocal. By turns, they rebelled against heavy taxes and forced labour, built alliances with the empire, and adhered to millennial sects. The eventful decades of the late 2nd century and early 3rd century CE show intimate collaboration between local groups, to the detriment of central authorities. The collapse of complex polities has been the focus of comparative studies, leading to definitions that can be applied to the Eastern Han case. Political factors for de-centralization and fragmentation include: overtaxing, local intermediaries gaining power, taxes not reaching the centre, overexploitation leading to environmental disaster, political fragmentation, inefficient bureaucracy, manorialism and fragmentation of territorial administration, mass migrations leading to both loss of population and overpopulation, shift from rotating provincial officials to hereditary functions and the rise of local powerful families, and the rebellion of native groups or “barbarians” (Middleton, 2008 p.55-58). To the groups which take profit from collapse, Eisenstadt (1988 p.241) adds what he calls “antisystem” entities, often backed by an alternative ideology or religion.

Most areas surveyed by this study came to be mentioned in historical documents only when they entered the *jimi* 羁縻, a novel system of frontier administration initiated under the Sui dynasty (Allard, 2015 p.34), thus four centuries after the Eastern Han period. The term *jimi*, literally “horse bridle” (*ji*) and “ox halter” (*mi*), conveys the idea of being loosely reigned (Pelliot, 1904 p.140). The native population of urban and agrarian centres was deported to lightly populated *jimi* areas (*jimi zhou*), where cultural ignorance and the lack of linguistic skills induced local officials to literally create tribes (Abramson, 2011 p.124). Later gazetteers (7th to 12th centuries CE) show that tributaries south of the Yangzi oscillate constantly between being formally recorded as direct counties of the empire or as native chieftaincies under indirect imperial rule, in accordance with the *tusi* 土司 (literally “native officials”) system, initiated under the Song. Between the Yuan and Ming dynasties, the *tusi* system was eventually replaced by a system of direct rule and a frontier policy coined “return of the land” (*gaitu guiliu* 改土歸
流), which led to large-scale deportation and ended the rule of native chieftaincies (Giersch, 2006 p.72 and Hostetler, 2001 p.117-9), becoming effective under the reign of Emperor Yongzheng (1673-1725) (Herman, 1997; Shin, 2006). The succession of indirect rule systems has led some scholars to claim that the area was not successfully colonised but went through a "very long process of middle ground" (Bin, 2009 p.174). To render justice to such a process of middle ground, one should avoid characterizing as "Han" or "non-Han" the groups or funerary expressions emerging in the area at a time of weakened Han rule.

## 3 Archaeological background

### Migrations, settlements and trade

Migratory movements transformed the land over centuries of Han rule. Coming from the Sichuan basin and beyond, Western Han period settlers built towns and cemeteries in the gorges area of the Yangzi river, along its upper course and its main southern tributaries (Wang, 2006; Li, 2010; Jiang, 2010 and He, 2011 pp.78-90). Farming and fishing activities sustained growing communities along these rivers, which represented major southward trade routes, with merchants looking for a direct access to local resources such as salt, extracted by a migrant workforce (Suo, 2006 p.62). The products of forestry such as wood, faunal and floral products such as horses and tea or spices, minerals such as cinnabar, as well as slaves, tributes and heavily taxed merchandises such as salt and iron artefacts, transited through fluvial havens along major rivers, down to the Sichuan basin (Tang, 1982; He, 2011 p.139). The production of manufactured goods initiated under the Qin dynasty and flourishing in the Western Han Empire also had some of its most important centers in Sichuan. Standardized iron products produced by large-scale state manufactures such as spade-heads, ploughshares, U-shaped spade-caps, punch, chisels and ring-handled knives, are thus found in settlements and Han period tombs south of the Yangzi such as Huangjinwan, excavated by the Guizhou Province Archaeological Institute (Zhang, 2016). Huangjinwan, located on the Chishui river, a major southern tributary of the Yangzi documented in historical sources of the Han period, is a rare occurrence of Han period settlement discovered south of the Yangzi.

While pre-Han settlements are found mostly in a limited area in the Yangzi gorges, Han period settlers spread more evenly along the main course of the Yangzi, and upstream its main tributaries (Zheng et al, 2008 p.115). Mirroring processes of demographic growth in Eastern Han times, the amount of settlements uncovered in the Three Gorges area is thrice as big as in any other period before and until the end of the sixth century CE (He, 2011 p.78), with the largest number of sites dating to the Han dynasty. In the late Han period, colonists took over the valleys, while hilly areas were left to the natives and refugees (De Crespigny, 2004 p.7). Four types of settlements are found in the upper Yangzi area in decreasing order of importance and scale: commandery seats (jun 郡), county seats (xian 縣), villages and outposts. Commandery and county seats along the main course of the Yangzi and its main tributaries are likely to have been inhabited by incomers since the early Han period. Commandery seats are located on the Yangzi main course, or on its major tributaries. Their main function was military, and they would choose strategic locations, such as gorges or plains located at the crossing of rivers, as well as accessible points on the major tributaries of the Yangzi. County seats are also located on the Yangzi main course, or on its major tributaries. Equally fortified, they prosper on salt or other trade goods. Workshops and cemeteries are found out of the settlement enclosure. Such centres multiply in late Eastern Han and are more densely distributed over the territory. Han period settlements and cemeteries are found along the four major southern
tributaries of the upper Yangzi river. Settlement evidence is lacking for minor tributaries, which were probably dotted with villages or outposts. Villages would have been groups of small houses, engaged in small-scale production. In the late Eastern Han, village-level settlements reach second and third order tributaries of the Yangzi river, with some villages acquiring an important role as post stations (yichuan 驛傳) or staging posts on trade routes (He, 2011 p.87-90).

Before and after events of conquest and colonization, independently from imperial politics, trade in the Southwest had been a major motivation behind the maintenance of routes. Explicit mention in written sources of far-reaching southward connections, however, only date back to 122 BCE, with Zhang Qian's report on silk and bamboo items from Shu, traded to India and found in Bactria. His report points at routes connecting Sichuan to South Asia, undisturbed by the ups and downs of imperial governance. After the fall of Qin and the establishment of frontier posts on the limits of Shu, the merchants of Shu were known to "privately" use the network of south-western routes (Hanshu 61, pp. 2689-2690; Hulsewé, 1979 p. 211-213; Huayang Guo Zhi 4, p. 341). Private trade would have been essential for communities dwelling along the southward routes. The type of merchandise collected and redistributed by the state, such as grain, slaves, salt and metal, is susceptible to have been the basis of unofficial trade in the right political moment by agents viewed as brigands or smugglers from the point of view of the political center (Connolly and Bevan, 2013 pp. 227-228). In the Chinese system of tax and tribute, private traders are often in conflict with political elites. Qin and Han period taxes on salt and iron constituted the main government revenue and a means of centrally controlling crucial supplies (Sage, 1992 p.98; Guo, 1997 p.631). State monopoles over salt and iron were controverted, because of the high prices and poor quality of state production by convict laborers (Wang, 1992 p.67). In such rigid and controlled economies, alternative production and informal trade networks were necessarily present and profited from the system's inefficiencies (Oka and Kusimba, 2008 p. 358-359). Local iron producers are described as families of private industrialists hiring multitudes of bandits, described in sources as "brutal and tyrannical", "greedy" and "increasingly ungovernable" (Yantie Lun, 1992 p. 67; Wagner, 2001).

By the end of the second century CE to the early third century CE, both the documentary and the archaeological evidence of the Three Gorges area show factors of ecological imbalance, just like elsewhere in the Empire (Elvin, 2004 p.53 and 86). The climate in late Han times and beyond (especially in 280-289 CE) features cooler temperatures as compared to the Western Han period (Lan, 1998 p.40-2). The increasing surface of settlements, traces of deforestation, salt mining activity and flooding alter the small amount of arable land available along the Yangzi. Demographic pressure motivates intense clearance activities (shetian yundong 畲田運動) in order to increase arable land, the primary concern being the implantation of paddy field cultivation in the river valleys and on terraced slopes (De Crespigny, 2004 p.51), leading to severe erosion and the formation of new watercourses (Huo, 2011 p.3). Natural disasters such as flooding are recorded in written sources (Hanshu 27, 1346) and detectable in the archaeological record (Three Gorges, 2007 p.806). Together with the crowding of riverbanks, this added to the pressure on settlers, and the pattern coincided with the choice of higher elevation sites, both for settlement and cemeteries. As mentioned above, in the latter half of the second century CE, the rare flat areas adequate for settlements register a sudden population decline.
Southward fluvial routes, highland hubs and Han period tombs in the highlands

Against the edges of the Himalayas, runs the Jinsha river in deep-cut impenetrable gorges. The Qin period southward route (Wuchi dao 五尺道) followed the Jinsha river upstream and its entrance was called Bodao 獧道 in Western Han times (Hanshu 28, 1599). The word for “route” (dao 道) designated county-level administrative areas containing native peoples comprising the majority of the population, “where barbarians live” (Hanshu 19, 742). Local groups controlled the trade routes coveted by Emperor Wudi of the Han, such as the betel route to Nanyue 南越 in present day Guangdong province. This constituted general Tang Meng’s 唐蒙 main argument to take over Yelang in 135-130 BCE (Shiji 116, 2994). Whether Bodao is also to be considered as the location of the “southern barbarians route” (Nanyi dao 南夷道), opened by Tang Meng on his way to Yelang is still controversial (Hervouet, 1984 p. 81). Two campaign itineraries are proposed: the first departs from Bodao and the second one from the Fu Pass (Fu guan 符關), present-day Hejiang. In fact, rather than the deep-cut narrow bed of the Jinsha, Tang Meng most probably followed one of its tributaries, and when looking for connections to Nanyue in modern Guangdong province, the expedition had to reach the course of the Chishui and Wu rivers towards the highland hub of Bi 鹦. All of these alternatives to the course of the Jinsha are more likely to have been adopted by Tang Meng. The reason why the Jinsha route has been much insisted upon, is because this route leads to the Erhai region and the remains of Dian culture. Seals excavated in the Shijiashan cemetery allowed historians to identify the kingdom as a vassal to the Chinese along with Yelang, fostering major attention around Dian as a prime representative of ancient highland cultures. Less visible in the archaeological record, this stretch of land was occupied by a federation of smaller, less identifiable groupings that thrived in transversal routes between lowland and highland hubs, often filled by the place name “Yelang” (Herman, 2009 p.248). Several Han period sites, both cemeteries and settlements, have been uncovered since the 1970s in this “blank” area, which give us a better idea of acculturation mechanisms in the highlands between Bodao and the Chishui river route (Fig.2) (Wan, 2013 p.160).

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>Fig.2 Main concentrations of Han period tombs along the Yangzi river and its southern tributaries and in the Yunnan-Guizhou highlands, including rock-cut burials, graves constructed with assembled stones, and brick-built chambers. The lines drawn</figcaption></figure>
here, as in the following maps are simply connecting cemeteries and settlements: they sometimes follow known fluvial routes, or stretches of land which are known to have been covered from historical sources. The resulting graph is largely a work-in-progress integrating several kinds of information.

In the upper course of the Jinsha river lay the remains of Kele, believed to be an important centre in Yelang (Guizhousheng Wenwu Kaogu Yanjiusuo 2008). Local tombs, which have no tumulus and are of smaller dimensions, are dated from the late Warring States to the late Western Han period (fifth to first century BCE). The first tombs showing adaptation to funerary customs of the Central Plains in the second and first centuries BCE are concentrated in Kele, showing that the location was reached early by settlers from the plain. They overlap with the latest local tombs, which are found until the first century CE. 20km west of Kele is the Han period administrative seat of Zhuti commandery, an area known to produce silver and copper (*Hanshu* 27, 1178 and 28, 1599). Its most representative group of cemeteries is the Zhongshui site, which graves belonged to a small agglomeration neighbouring Yelang, according to the interpretation of 51 ceramics engraved with patterns parented to Yi彝 script (Guizhousheng Bowuguan Kaoguzu 1981). However, Eastern Han tombs are of the brick chamber type in neighbouring cemeteries, and considerable numbers of bronze weapons were excavated, which show a strong influence from the Central Plains along with artefacts belonging to local cultures.

Bi, in present day Zunyi county, northern Guizhou province, was a major highland political and trade hub. From Bi, through Bijie upstream the Chishui river, one could reach Zhuti commandery in present-day Zhaotong county. When Emperor Wudi destroyed Yelang in 135 BCE to establish Jianwei commandery in its place (*Huayang Guozhi* 3, 270-288), Bi became the seat of the commandery. In Eastern Han times, the centre of Jianwei shifted north, to *Bodao*, and Bi came to belong to Zangke commandery (*Hou Hanshu* 86, 2845 and *Huayang Guozhi* 4, 335). The area produced tea and honey, counted a thousand households (*Huayang Guozhi* 4, 386), and under the Jin (313 CE) it had water route connections to the lower Yangzi river basin. No precise location is available for Bi, but it was strategically located between the upper Chishui and upper Wu river courses (*Hanshu* 28, 1602; *Huayang guozhi* 3, 294). Several Han period funerary sites datable to the Eastern Han period could match the location of Bi (Tang et al., 1987; Hu, 2006; Guizhousheng Wenwu Kaogu Yanjiusuo 1998). Most tombs are in assembled stones, carved with typical Eastern Han iconography and burials in brick chambers furnished with the typical Han assemblage of ceramics, figurines and *wuzhu*五錢 coins issued by the Han dynasty (Zhang, 1996 p.147). If one follows the upper reaches of the Wu river southwards, large Han period settlements are found with attached kilns and cemeteries. These count several hundreds of tombs, again in assembled stones, pit graves and brick-built chambers (Guizhousheng Bowuguan 1972 and 1983; Xiong, 1956). In the Southwest, at the foot of the higher Yunnan plateau, about 40 tombs were found with high status items such as a bronze horses and chariots (Xiong, 1979; Zhang, 2015), money trees, and a seal that belonged to the vice-governor of Ba commandery (Guizhousheng Wenwu Kaogu Yanjiusuo 1993), pointing at connections to the Fu Pass rather than to *Bodao* (Zhang, 1996; Yang, 2016).

Based on the archaeological record reviewed above, funerary expressions of highland cultures active in the area between Dian and Yelang show gradual typological homogeneity under Han rule, with brick or assembled stone chambers furnished with the typical assemblage of ceramics, figurines and *wuzhu* coins. We will see in the following sections that, although it kept a lower profile in history, it is the buffer zone between plain and highlands rather than the highland cemeteries that showed greater innovation in terms of burial practices.
Rock-cut burials as “provincial Han tombs”: the Sichuan basin and Yangzi gorges

Cliff tombs in Southwest China are currently understood as a regional phenomenon forming part of the wider reformulation of funerary practices happening in the Han period (3rd century BCE to 3rd century CE). The deceased, who used to be disposed in a wooden coffin buried in a vertical pit (shaft tomb), were now placed in a stone or brick chamber modelled on dwellings of the living (horizontal tombs), and the funerary space was furnished like “happy homes” for the deceased to reside in (Wu, 2011 p. 33). Tombs of wealthy people, but also commoners, were always furnished with artefacts, and tomb robbing has a long history in ancient China. From the emperor to the commoner, anyone who would build a tomb, would think about protection and discretion. Constant concern about being robbed is expressed in funerary inscriptions and transmitted texts of the time, even more so in the late Eastern Han (Brashier, 2011 p. 176).

The first rock-cut chambers known in ancient China were hollowed in natural mountains by members of the Liu family in the Western Han period (206 BCE to 8 CE) in north-eastern and eastern China, like the tomb of Liu Sheng and his consort at Mancheng, Hebei. Their function as a political statement and a tool to consolidate social hierarchies and alliances that has retained scholarly attention: mountains both played a strategic role as part of the king's territory, and as a symbol of permanence of the Liu clan (Miller, 2015 p. 28-9). It is thus the tombs' agency in structuring the society of the living and legitimizing their power that come to the foreground. Erickson considers tombs such as Liu Sheng's to have initiated the idea of the tomb replicating the palace environment of the living king, and to have served as a prototype for rock-cut tombs in Sichuan (Erickson, 2003 p. 405). Indeed, most studies on Han tombs consider that the concomitant emergence of a new design for elite funerary spaces and a new social function for these spaces served as a model for lesser forms of chamber burials in general, built in brick or assembled stones throughout the empire (Rawson, 1999 p. 9). Funerary practices would thus follow a “downward process of diffusion” from metropolitan to provincial centers (Thorp, 1979 p. 250). In an area centered on the Chengdu plain, centuries of immigration from other regions of the empire led to a provincial context dominated by a local elite of powerful families who owned large estates and hired landless tenant farmers (Brown, 2007 p. 62-63). Here, rock-cut chambers were used along with brick-built chambers, while burial chambers assembled in quarried stones, found elsewhere in the empire, were generally absent. To Chen Xuan, who underlines the importance of local powerful families in the development of the region, not all cliff tombs are attributable to wealthy groups, but rather to “middle income families”, descendants of more powerful immigrants or aspiring to enhance their status and family image (Chen, 2015 p. 14). Here too, cliff tombs are presented as a factor of social cohesion, technically allowing more experimentation in terms of tomb structure and decoration, and encouraging an increased inter-generational consciousness.

In elite cliff tombs of the Leshan area and further south on the Min river, rock-cut memorial halls, also found in the literature under the term “antechambers” or “vestibules”, precede the cutting of individual chambers and remain accessible to the living (Fig.3A), probably serving as shrines to perform funerary rites. Very few examples have survived of stone shrines placed on the ground surface above the grave, such as the Xiaotangshan shrine (129 CE terminus ante quem) and the Wu Liang shrine (151 AD). The shrines were built by the wealthy, and commoners would replace sacrifice at the shrine by sacrifice performed at home or at the grave. The tomb itself was perhaps the primary shrine for commoners (Nylan, 2008). Despite the precept that a Han tomb is to be sealed once and for all, the burial chamber itself might have served ritual purposes for an audience whose social needs would be stronger than established cultural conventions (Zhou, 2016). This hypothesis could be valid for spacious chambers with
a ground-level entrance such as in Citangpo (Wei, 2015), where the entrance is marked by a pair of towers forming a gate (Fig.3B). However, most commoners' rock-cut tombs in the Sichuan basin and Yangzi gorges, often cut in a lesser quality rock, maintain a sealed entrance in the long alley leading to the chamber (Fig.3C). The chamber is furnished with ritual and functional vessels as well as figurines and architectural models reflecting a prosperous rural estate, with models of houses, wells, ponds, chickens, pigs, etc (Yao, 2015 Fig. 2.5). The spaces and the tomb furnishings promote an ideal of the afterlife as a continuation of this life reflected in domestic themes, but they also contain references to cosmology and allusions to a heavenly journey of the soul in the form of pictorial carvings.

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>Fig.3. (AA') Outdoor and indoor views of a memorial hall along the Min river in Huangsan, Yibin city, Sichuan province. 1st to 2nd century CE. Note how the tombs are progressively added to the hall over the generations, cutting into the pre-existing architectural decoration of the hall. - (B) Cliff tomb in Citangpo, Anyue county, Sichuan province. Note the rock-cut stove, the niche to store objects and two relief models of houses carved on the cave walls, followed by a rock-cut couch to lay the body on. - (CC') Cliff tomb in Fengjie district, Chongqing municipality. Note the length of the alley, and the type of tomb closure, excluding any kind of outdoor visibility. Source: courtesy of Wushan District Archaeological Office.</figcaption></figure>

Found along with other contemporaneous forms of chamber burials (mostly brick-built chambers), rock-cut tombs in Sichuan similarly privilege a durable material, stone; they display a similar iconographic program and serve similar ritual functions. Not all cliff tombs, however, display an obvious adherence to Han period funerary practices, or were necessarily built by communities sharing a comparable subsistence mode, social organization or religious beliefs. Having described the mainstream funerary practice in Han period southwest China, let us now look at a type of cliff tomb which does not fit the funerary ideology and social function of Han tombs, but which can also be dated to the Han period. While cliff tombs found in the Sichuan
basin and Yangzi gorges belong to areas playing a relatively stable role in agricultural and industrial production since the Qin, diverging types of cave burials south of the Yangzi investigated here are located in lands under mixed rule, with frequent uprisings and attempts at parallel territorial dynamics. The table below summarizes the differences between “provincial Han tombs” and the diverging burial tradition investigated in the following section.

<table><caption>Table 2. Characteristics of the cave burials south of the Yangzi (Type 2), as compared to Han period rock-cut tombs in Southwest China (Type 1).</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>Type 1</th><th>Type 2</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td></td><td>Han period rock-cut tombs in the Sichuan basin, along the main course of the Yangzi or major tributary (Min river, Chishui river, Wu river, Long river)</td><td>Han period rock-cut tombs along secondary tributaries south of the Yangzi</td></tr><tr><td>Elevation</td><td>200-300m m.s.l.</td><td>600 to 700m m.s.l.</td></tr><tr><td>Visibility</td><td>Hidden or half-buried in sloping terrain.<br>Strict separation between the living and the dead.<br>Loot prevention.</td><td>Visible landmark, mostly riverside cliffs or boulders.<br>Visibility enhanced by height from ground of the tomb (from 2 to 20 m), and by the shadow of the recessed doors.</td></tr><tr><td>Accessibility</td><td>Accessible<br>Ground level<br>Sealed alley or corridors.<br>Outer halls, wide open and accessible to the living, can connect corridors leading to tombs.</td><td>Apparently inaccessible due to height above ground (2 to 20 m)<br>2 to 5m-high caves remain within reach.<br>Probable addition of perishable structures (wood, bamboo) - when excavating the cave or lifting the deceased in.</td></tr><tr><td>Cave Opening</td><td>Tomb alley or corridor (entrenchment).<br>Entrance blocked by piling dirt or stones.</td><td>The cave opens directly on the outside.<br>A recessed doorframe enhances the threshold.<br>No sealing device (hinge, trench).</td></tr><tr><td>Cave layout</td><td>Additional chambers and niches can be carved along the corridors.<br>Addition of rock-cut architectural details (stoves, pillars).</td><td>Single cavity.<br>No niches are prepared for bodies.</td></tr><tr><td>coffins</td><td>Quarried stone coffins or rock-cut coffins<br>Central plain influenced cosmology.<br>Systematic iconography.<br>Quarried, better quality stone.</td><td>None</td></tr><tr><td>Depictions</td><td>Indoor sculpture and relief carvings.<br>In some cases, decorated outer halls.</td><td>Outdoor line carvings.<br>Indoor wall dressings.</td></tr></tbody></table>

## 4 Investigation of burial caves along southern tributaries of the upper Yangzi river

In the years 2009-2012 (Wei, 2015), my research started with a preliminary survey of Eastern Han period rock-cut cliff tombs beginning with richly decorated ensembles found in the Sichuan basin (such as Santai county, Zhongjiang county, Leshan city, Anyue county, Luzhou city, etc.), as well as some lesser known ensembles of caves further south, across the Yangzi river. During this preliminary survey, I was visually struck by the impact produced on the landscape by the caves south of the Yangzi. Despite their modest dimensions, the caves were placed higher above ground, with neatly outlined recessed door frames, visible from across the valley, and their carved decorations were placed outdoors. For my PhD research (Wei, 2018), I chose to investigate whether these divergences from Han period tombs elsewhere in Southwest China could be explained by dating and distribution, as well as epigraphic and iconographic elements.

A first literature review showed that burial caves south of the Yangzi had been dismissed as a marginal funerary expression both by scholars focusing on the historical period of the Han dynasty, by archaeologists working on burial sites of the pre-Imperial period, and by anthropologists studying the ethnic groups inhabiting Southwest China. The blind spot in scholarship concerning burial caves south of the Yangzi can be explained by past and current conjunctions of both disciplinary and administrative boundaries. Stuck in-between the historical Han period and the wider practice of cliff burials in South China and Southeast Asia, the caves south of the Yangzi were individually reported at the time of their discovery by local archaeologists since the 1980s in journals such as *Kaogu*, *Wenwu*, or *Sichuan Wenwu*. Apart from these occasional mentions, they are listed in the successive national archaeological recensions, partly published as provincial archaeological atlases (Archaeological Atlas by Province 2002-2009). When located on the main course of the Yangzi, especially in the gorges
area, some burial sites - groups of burial caves - are more fully described in reports from the Three Gorges Archaeological Project (Three Gorges 1997-2001). While gathering data on Han period tombs and settlements from these sources, I soon realized that when it came to rock-cut caves, little effort was made to adopt a common terminology and classification criteria across counties, not to mention across provincial boundaries. The distribution of burial caves across six modern provinces (Sichuan, Chongqing, Yunnan, Guizhou, Hubei and Hunan) contributed to fragment the evidence. While guidance by provincial archaeological offices was useful to access important settlement sites such as Huangjinwan in Guizhou province, it was of little help when it came to the caves I wanted to address, which they considered as discouragingly empty, badly weathered, and difficult to access. I thus had to plan fieldwork from the bottom up, spending most of my time with county level archaeological officers to understand how they had processed the information when gathering data on the occasion of periodical national recensions of unmoveable heritage sites. The sources for this study, which compilation resulted in a database of 562 groups of burial caves and 579 individual burial caves within these groups (Wei, 2018 pp.496-544), are summarized in the table below.

<table><caption>Table 3. Main sources of data about burial caves south of the Yangzi and their reliability.</caption><thead><tr><td>source</td><td>Site location</td><td>Photographic evidence</td><td>Typology and measurements</td><td>Inscriptions and depictions</td><td>reliability</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Published Articles and books (See bibliography in Wei, 2018 pp.583-611)</td><td>Relative position to nearest town, low-resolution contour map</td><td>Photos, drawings and sketches but often old low-resolution publications</td><td>Typology and measurements for discussed caves</td><td>Rubbings rather than photographs. Depictions decontextualised</td><td>Case studies on uneven criteria, make comparison difficult, mainly 1980-2000</td></tr><tr><td>Archaeological Atlases previous to 2002</td><td>Direction from and distance to nearest village</td><td>none</td><td>Given for one cave per site (best preserved, accessible)</td><td>Inscriptions mentioned but no full transcript. Depictions listed but vague description</td><td>Based on 1st survey, terminology unsystematic</td></tr><tr><td>2002-2007 Archaeological Atlases</td><td>Undisclosed</td><td>none</td><td>Given for one cave per site (best preserved, accessible)</td><td>Inscriptions mentioned but no full transcript. Depictions listed but vague description</td><td>Based on 1st and 3rd national survey. Format is imposed on all periods and type of site</td></tr><tr><td>Three Gorges 1997-2001. Collection of Reports on the Three Gorges Project 1997-2001</td><td>1 GPS location, all period neighbouring settlements and cemeteries included</td><td>Scaled line drawings, groundplans and photographs</td><td>Measurements for all caves</td><td></td><td>Unevenness, problem of coordination between different teams, urgency</td></tr><tr><td>3rd national survey unpublished data 2009</td><td>1 to 3 GPS locations and contour map of immediate environment</td><td>1 to 5 photographs, low res, no light, no depiction/inscription</td><td>Typology for all caves, measurements for 1 cave per site</td><td>Full transcript of known inscriptions. Depictions listed but vague terminology.</td><td>Essentially for monitoring purposes, inadequate format, subcontracted survey</td></tr></tbody></table>

My survey was the result of a collaborative effort with county level archaeological officers who accepted to partially or fully share their database, last updated during the 3rd national survey in 2009. The officers able to guide me to the burial sites were invariably those having participated personally in the successive national surveys, but we also relied on local farmers to cut through the fast-growing vegetation. With the printed reports in hand, we returned to the caves and re-examined their epigraphy, iconography and typology (see below). We invariably found inscriptions that had been overlooked or misinterpreted, engraved figures which the surveyor failed to notice among the rock-cut wall dressing marks, types of caves that had not been visited (as only one cave of each group was usually measured for the report), and additional caves or groups of caves in unexplored sections of the cliffs due to reduced visibility under the vegetation cover. When I became familiar enough with the kind of overlooked information that would be
useful to my research, I started to select the burial sites to be re-visited in the national survey database. I focused on overlooked typological aspects diverging from known funerary practice during the Han dynasty, including height from ground, reduced cave size or caves with wider than deep volumes, the presence of outdoor line carved design, recessed doorframes with enhanced visibility, as well as no evidence of closure. I found burial caves corresponding to this profile in 63 locations indicating groups of burial caves along southern tributaries of the Yangzi river over 500km, circumscribed between the years 120 and 223 CE, either by direct epigraphic dates or through comparison in terms of iconography and typology (Wei, 2018 pp.404-5). We also encounter damaged inscriptions or figures due to the conditions of preservation of the soft sandstone submitted to changes in climate and flooding, and caves too difficult to access, but the collaboration was fruitful in improving basic protocol for recording rock-cut sites, rectifying dating for several caves and increase local awareness of interregional dynamics, where even apparently isolated burial sites can be caught. The following table lists the methodological choices adopted for this collaborative survey in the years 2012-2017.

<table><caption>Table 4. Methodological choices for survey in the years 2012-2017. Types of burials were identified for the surveyed sites located in different areas.</caption><thead><tr><td>Site location</td><td>Photographic evidence</td><td>Measurements and typology</td><td>Inscriptions and depictions</td><td>reliability</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Each photograph has embedded GPS location. Locations were reached by foot (only a small minority of the sites are located near modern motorways), and the path leading to each site was recorded as well. The distance between sites was walked when vegetation and hydrography allowed it. For the Qinxi river, for example, the valley was fully walked and several isolated caves found in-between known sites.</td><td>Adequate lights<br>Telescopic mast<br>Photographic database<br>Photogrammetry</td><td>All caves were visited in each surveyed site and measurements taken for each. The terminology applied to cave shape, ceiling shape and cave opening was checked against the evidence. Divergence from known types (niche-shaped or tunnel-shaped caves, as opposed to the cubic caves described in reports) were identified within the whole dataset of surveyed sites, across several provinces and counties. Moreover, an experiment in replicating a cave was led to reconsider typological categories from the point of view of production. (Wei, 2016)</td><td>Inscriptions were deciphered in situ. While some of the inscriptions have deteriorated since their first publication in the 80s, most of them are clearly readable with adequate light. Each inscription/depiction was photographed. Rubbings were taken when the hardness of the stone allowed it, more as a way to understand the limitations of this technique.</td><td>limited to 63 surveyed sites (groups of burial caves)</td></tr></tbody></table>

I was able to find chronological information for 50 previously identified man-made caves south of the Yangzi, dated to the late Han dynasty, that opened a “window” in the wide geographical and temporal spread of cliff burial practices (Wei, 2018 pp.428-450). I turned to historical sources covering the area for that period to constitute a general background when researching the identity of the cave builders (Shiji, Hanshu, Hou Hanshu, Huayang Guo Zhi, Sanguo Zhi). I built a timeline of the late 2nd century CE, listing major events such as military campaigns, religious uprisings, rebellions of southwestern groups dwelling in the hills and highlands, as well as census data to trace waves of migrants from the Central Plains and the Sichuan basin or fluctuations in the administration of the frontier (Wei, 2018 pp. 365-395). To fully grasp the evolution of frontier administration and the role of the different local actors, my timeline came to include events and facts from later dynastic histories (Jiu Tangshu, Songshi), specific treatises (Yantie Lun) or more general histories (Tongdian, Zizhi Tongjian). As close as I wanted to remain to the late Han period, I had to piece information together to get a grasp of how people, goods and idea moved through time and space on the southwest frontier.
The geographic information contained in the above-listed sources remained limited, even for important routes opened by military campaigns and maintained through trade. I thus attempted to match the locations encountered during survey to places, routes and rivers described in geographical treatises or gazetteers postdating the Han period (Shuijing Zhu, Yuanhe Junxian Tuzhi, Yuanfeng Jiuyu Zhi, Yudi Jisheng, Shu Zhong mingshengji), sometimes directly using synthetic historical maps (Yan Gengwang, 1986) or map datasets integrating historical place names and boundaries (CHGIS, 2014). A better understanding of the long-term historical geography of the area allowed me to identify major southward routes along the course of the present-day Jinsha 金沙江, Chishui 赤水河 (former Anle shui 安樂水; Zhuijing Zhu, 33) and Wu 吴江 (former Yanjiang shui 延江水; Zhuijing Zhu, 36) rivers, better referenced along with some of their tributaries in written history, as well as the more elusive Changning 長寧河, Xishui 習水河, Qi 絮江, Long 隆河 and Jian'an 建安河 rivers, which gradually appeared as a dense network of minor side routes connecting major fluvial courses (Fig.4).

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /><figcaption>Fig.4. Schematic map of the survey area across five modern provinces and districts, and along major (in red) and minor southern tributaries of the upper Yangzi river. The approximate distance between Qigedong and Qikongzi is 500km.</figcaption></figure>

For each of these “silent” minor routes, I departed from the moment when they appeared in written sources, tacking note of how they became integrated in administrative geography and in relation to which known centers or routes, to travel backwards and build up a “proto-historical geography”, integrating the archaeological evidence for Han period. Settlement and burials sites listed as “Han” in the archaeological atlases, however, often last well into the period of the Six Dynasties, starting at the end of the Han Empire in 220 and extending until the late 6th century CE. Apart from the 50 dated caves I was able to identify and the 63 burial sites I could survey directly, my “proto-historical geography” remains a working hypothesis, given the inevitable degree of imprecision. The necessity to better understand the distribution of the caves led to a complementary survey along select southern tributaries of the Yangzi, by which I was able to confirm consistencies in the distribution of the alternative funerary practices. Two dimensions – typology and distribution – were useful in determining evidence for the motivations of cave
builders and their role in local history, for which the complexity had been obscured by the hasty
attribution of the burials as “Han”. The map below shows how my comparative survey of cliff
tombs along major and minor tributaries was organized along five southward routes (Fig.5), with
survey results for each frame detailed in the next section. I focused my survey of Type 2 burials
in the area shown by Frame E, but I also found burials in the other areas. Using as much
information as possible from previous archaeological research, I traveled to targeted areas and
then sought to determine if additional cave burials were in the areas along the tributaries.

<figure><img src="image_6.png" /><figcaption>Fig.5. Dotted boxes indicating rough survey areas along each southern tributary of the upper Yangzi river in Southwest China, along the mountain belt forming the southern rim of the Sichuan basin. (A. Jinsha river; B. Chishui river; C. Wu river; D. Long river and E. Qi river, framed in red). The white dots (TYPE 1) mark typical Han period burials south of the Yangzi. The grey dots (TYPE 2) mark the location of alternative forms of cave burials confirmed during survey.</figcaption></figure>

5 Results: typology of cave burials South of the Yangzi

Frame A: Qigedong on the Changning river, and the Jinsha “route”

To this day, only one site displaying a clear divergence from known types of rock-cut tombs
has received scholarly and public attention, the Qigedong site (Qigedong, 1985) (Fig.6).
Because of its atypical iconography and a different cave typology, the site is presented an
anomaly in the context of Han period cliff tombs. Four dated inscriptions dated between 122
and 178 CE show that interventions succeeded each other, within one month, seven months, or
56 years. Two among the inscriptions erroneously refer to the previous dynastic era. The first
error is only of a little less than two months, while the second error shows an eight months
delay, possibly indicating obstacles in communication. The inscriptions are in Chinese script
and refer to Han dynastic era names, and carved depictions evoke themes encountered in Han
period carvings elsewhere in the Empire. However, the style and distribution of the caves,
depictions and inscriptions point at a hybrid artistic tradition. The caves have no monumental
antechamber but they are highly visible. The ostentatious ornamentation of the cliff face sets
the site apart from the caves found in the Yangzi gorges area or along main southern tributaries
of the Yangzi. This spectacular aspect is enhanced by a surprise effect, as visibility is strictly
delimited by the meanders of the deep-cut canyon.

By contrast to the small number of burial sites found on the Jinsha river, which would at first
appear as a major route towards the Yunnan plateau, ten times as many cemeteries are located
on the Changning river. Among these, 16 rock-cut cemeteries are known only on the upper
course of the Nanguang river, probably as a continuation of the Changning river route towards
Yunnan. Keeping in mind this example, where a second-order tributary of the Yangzi river
corresponded to an area of major concentration of caves as compared to a major southern
tributary, this research project proceeded to survey the whole southern bank of the Yangzi.

<figure><img src="image_7.png" /><figcaption>Fig.6. View of Qigedong, Changning county, Sichuan province. 122-178 CE.</figcaption></figure>

Frame B: Cliff burials on the Chishui river and its tributary, the Xishui

The next southern tributary of the Yangzi river, the Chishui river (former Anle xi 安樂溪),
provides a direct connection from the Sichuan basin to the Guizhou plateau (Zhuijing Zhu 33,
2786; Yu di ji sheng, 153, 4127-4128) and served as a major route southwards for salt trade, the
Hemao route 合茅道 (Yan, 1986 p.1094). A large-scale surface rescue survey along the Chishui
river led by the Guizhou Province Archaeological Institute revealed the only Han period
settlements to fill the gaps between plain and highland. Among those, Huangjinwan has a total
surface of 40,000 sq.m., which makes it the biggest Han period agriculturalist settlement found
to this day south of the Yangzi. Agricultural tools such as iron ploughs produced in Shu
commandery found in situ are typical of Western Han settlements in the Southwest, and
postholes between 10-30cm of diameter indicate that a dozen of quadrangular buildings were
aligned to one another, with narrow passages of about 60cm left in-between. Eight cave burials
are cut in the hills in direct proximity to the settlement. Roughly moulded figurines were found
in the caves, including a large-sized horse and groom, smaller-sized water bearers, musicians,
singers, birds, pigs, etc. Other artefacts typically found in Han tombs are the bronze wuzhu
coins, a bronze bird-shaped pin (daigou 帶鉤) and iron tools such as an axe, and a ring-handled
sword. One cave at least has a rock-cut stove, but all have external trenches and built-in niches
(personal communication Zhang Gaike, Guizhou Province Archaeological Institute).

Several rock-cut cemeteries are known within a 1.5km radius around Huangjinwan. In Wanyouhao, 15m from the Chishui river, rock-cut stoves were added to the caves. In Fanjiazui, bricks were used to seal the entrance, a ring-handled iron knife, copper wuzhu coins and bone remains were found. In Yuanjiayou, a rock-cut corridor lead to the chamber, where ceramic and metal artefacts, two models of a house, wuzhu coins, and an iron knife were found (Zhang, 2002:93 and 95). The closest cemetery to the plain, on the lower course of the Chishui river, is Ma'anshan (Zhang, 2005:21). 21 caves are cut on a smoothly sloping sandstone hill facing the Chishui river, with wide long rock-cut trenches, narrowing towards the chamber opening. One of the caves features three rock-cut coffins on a row. As a step between Huangjinwan and Bi, Zhang Herong identifies the Hema site, located upstream the Chishui river in present-day Renhuai county, Guizhou province. A 10,000 sq.m settlement in Hema, yielded an Eastern Han brick chamber grave with figurines (Gu et al., 1993). Along with the settlements, these tombs indicate that the Chishui river was as a main penetration route in Han times for settlers from the Sichuan basin into the Guizhou plateau.

The general characteristics of the cliff tombs along the Chishui river are consistent with Han period rock-cut tombs from the Sichuan basin and Yangzi gorges: long rock-cut trenches lead to cave openings, which are sealed and remain invisible, and furnished with coffins, rock-cut stoves and grave goods which evoke the domestic sphere. Not all burials in the area, however, correspond to this profile. Near to its confluence with the Yangzi, the Chishui receives the waters of the Xishui river, (former Xibu shui 鰍部水) (Yan, 1986 p.1219). Written sources present it as another option to reach the highlands from the Fu Pass (Zhuijing Zhu 33, 2786). While the Chishui river flows into the Luzhou plain, the Xishui river flows in a territory enclosed by narrow valleys. The Chishui and Xishui river sites illustrate the distinction between cave burials along first and second order tributaries of the Yangzi. (Fig.7)
<figure><img src="image_8.png" /><figcaption>Fig.7. The Chishui and Xishui river sites. Note the 30km interval between Ma'anshan-Huangjinwan-Hema, typical of stages on a route and similar to the distance between Guangdu-Sanchahe-Shaxi.</figcaption></figure>

Upstream the Xishui is Sanchahe, located near the junction of three streams, all three forming the upper Xishui river (Fig.8A). The site constitutes important evidence for the path between Fu and Bi (He, 2011 p.132). The five caves in Shanchahe feature layered doorframes and a 223 CE inscription containing an instance of erroneous dating with a three months delay (Huang, 1986 p.68). Apparently, the information on the death of Liu Bei 劉備 (223 CE) in Baidicheng and the end of the Han dynasty did not reach the area. The caves are of small dimensions, with two of them being niche-shaped with horizontal rectangular openings. They are only about 60cm wide for 35cm deep, thus too small to store a fully extended body. One of the niche-like caves is surrounded by line carvings of a tower, a boat, a bird and a fish (Fig.8B). The other niche-like cave has a patterned ceiling, and a low relief fish figure on its inner wall, but close to the opening, visible from the foot of the cliff (Fig.8C).

The Shaxi site, on the east bank of the Shaxi river 沙溪河, a tributary of the Chishui river, could be reached by land route from Sanchahe. The cemetery is located at about 50-100m above the ground, it has 68 caves, high placed on a steep cliff face, visible from across the valley. Some of the doors have four added recessed layers, protected by carved gutter lines above their lintels. Undeciphered inscriptions are located next to the cave doors. The importance of Shaxi, obvious from the size of its cemetery, is matched by its strategic position halfway between Fu and Bi, where it could provide a transversal connection to the next river valley east of it, the Qi.
<figure><img src="image_9.png" /><figcaption>Fig.8. (A) View of Sanchahe. Xishui county, Guizhou province. 215-223 CE. – (B) Line-carved outdoor cliff face around Sanchahe M5. Xishui county, Guizhou province. 215-223 CE. – (C) Indoor carving visible from the foot of the cliff in Sanchahe M4. Xishui county, Guizhou province. 215-223 CE.</figcaption></figure>

## Frame C: Cliff burials in the Wu river and its tributary, the Longtan

The next major route connecting the gorges to the highlands is the Wu river (former *Fuling 洞陵*, also known as *Ba Jiang 巴江* or *Yanjiang shui 沿江水*) (*Zhuijing Zhu* 36, 2798), in present day Fuling district, Chongqing municipality. Fuling city, located where the Wu river feeds into the Yangzi, was the administrative seat of Ji county 枞縣, which had a strategic importance, under the name Yang Pass 陽關, both when traveling eastwards across the gorges from Ba commandery (*Huayang Guozhi* 1, 66) and when travelling southwards upstream the Wu river, towards the highlands. Traffic was thriving on the Wu river and, by the third century CE, it had generated a pool of bellicose local powerful families who were repeatedly pacified and deported to the Shu plain by tens of thousands (*Huayang Guozhi* 1, 83-84).

Settlements excavated in the vicinity of Fuling are grouped along the Yangzi, and were excavated during the Three Gorges project, including several burials in brick chambers and cliff tombs. The Chadian rock-cut cemetery site, with five large caves cut at the foot of low sandstone hills, furnished with platforms for the bodies and which door lintels show traces of sealing, is located on the Yangzi river, downstream from the confluence of the Wu river. The seven caves in Beiyan, located on a cliff overlooking the mouth of the Wu river on the Yangzi, are as lofty as the caves in Chadian. The tombs were dated to the mid-Eastern Han period, based on the artefacts found therein, including a ceramic urn was found with an inscription dated 119 CE (Three Gorges, 2001 pp. 2010-2041; Huang et al., 2012). Like in Chadian, the caves are equipped with water drainage canals and niches, and three among them have long corridors cut on the ground level, which have been re-buried. Beiyan is not exclusively a rock-cut cemetery, it has also one vertical shaft (M12) tomb dated to the Early Eastern Han, and ten burials in brick chamber attributed to the Late Eastern Han or Shu Han period (3rd century CE) (Hu and Huang, 2012). These findings indicate that just like the Luzhou plain extended its influence on the Fu
pass and the lower Chishui river, the alluvial plain of the lower Wu river was a preferred land for settlers coming from the main course of the Yangzi.

Further survey revealed the same contrast between cave burials along the Wu river and its tributary, the Longtan river as along the Chishui river and its tributary, the Xishui river. Here too, in contrast to the burial tradition found in lowland hubs, a cluster of ten rock-cut cemeteries with a total of 66 caves of the alternative type is located in a 10 sq.km. mountainous enclave upstream on the Longtan river, a western tributary of the Wu river, thus a second order tributary of the Yangzi.

## Frame D: Qikongzi on the Jian'an river

Near the eastern limit of the study area, this survey reached the Long river, where only 10th century CE or later caves had been reported (Wang, 2004). Here too, it is on a tributary of the upper Long river, thus a second order tributary of the Yangzi, that I was able to date two burial sites of the alternative type to the 2nd-3rd centuries CE: Guanzhuangkou and Dongsanzhai. A mountain range separates them from known cemeteries located on the main course of the Yangzi, such as Cuipingshan (Three Gorges, 2011). In Guanzhuangkou, high up a sandstone cliff overlooking the stream, five caves are known among which three are of the tunnel type, one of the chamber type and one of the niche type. Two inscriptions which had been overlooked but can be dated to 172-178 CE and 184 CE, are still visible on the cliff face, along with a line-carved tower and a tiger. The walls of the tunnel-like caves are dressed in tight geometric patterns with elaborate line-carved towers, fish and coins. Further inland, the caves of Dongsanzhai have identical outdoor line-carved figures and one inscription. A pass across the Qiyue mountains (over 1000m of elevation) connects the smaller streams of the upper Long river to the course of the Jian'an river. In this area, where no Han period remains had been reported to this day, I identified a cluster of five rock-cut cemetery sites along the Jian'an river that fully respond to the characteristics of the alternative type of burial caves (Type 2). The best example is Qikongzi in terms of location, cave typology and because of the presence of carved depictions and inscriptions (Fig.9).

<figure><img src="image_10.png" /><figcaption>Fig.9. View of Qikongzi. Lichuan county, Hubei province. Late 2nd century CE.</figcaption></figure>

Let us compare Qikongzi and Qigedong, respectively the westernmost and easternmost groups of burial caves considered in this research. Both sites are raised above ground. The Qikongzi caves are perched at up to 20m, while the highest cave in Qigedong reaches about 12m. Both sites show recessed doorframes and outdoor depictions or inscriptions. The inscription in Qikongzi is barely decipherable, but its calligraphic style bears strong similarities to the corpus of inscriptions gathered throughout the study area. In Qigedong, all caves are chambers with
triple recessed entrances, while the type of caves and treatment of doorframes (both the number of recessions and their dimensions) varies in Qikongzi. Particularly, one niche-like cave and one tunnel-like cave are present among the chambers in Qikongzi. The indoor wall and ceiling dressings in Qikongzi are compartmented and filled with fan-like or fishbone patterns. In terms of depictions, line-carved towers are the most often encountered decorative element along the Jian'an, as well as birds and fishes carved on the indoor walls. With Qigedong and Qikongzi, we cover the range of distinctive traits adopted by burial caves south of the Yangzi.

The caves are single volumes of smaller dimensions, sometimes reduced to shallow niches that can barely contain a single human body. Since no human remains have been recovered from the caves south of the Yangzi, except for later occurrences of re-use, the possibility of them being used as secondary burial or ossuary cannot be fully dismissed. Although the inscriptions found in the caves or next to the cave entrance designate the chambers as tombs (Wei, 2018 pp.427-461), these are not equipped with the rock-cut stove, shelves, and timber-like pictorial decorations characteristic of chambers following the “house model”, the domestic metaphor usually found in tombs of the Han period. The carved depictions found south of the Yangzi also do not correspond entirely to the pictorial repertoire available in Han tombs, and they are placed outdoors. Finally, the cave openings show no trace of permanent sealing and their presence in the landscape is enhanced by the addition of carved recessions. Interestingly, burial sites resembling Qigedong and Qikongzi in terms of cemetery setting and cave shape, some of them dated by epigraphy to the late 2nd century CE, are all located on secondary tributaries south of the Yangzi, over 500km from Yibin in the southern Sichuan basin to Yichang in the Yangzi gorges. Consistency in the sites’ distribution established a firm ground to argue that the type of rock-cut caves identified here are not a peripherical expression, but rather, a coherent and extended phenomenon, at the scale of the whole southwest frontier. Beyond typological similarities, the location of cemeteries on secondary tributaries gradually appeared as a point that deserves further enquiry.

## Frame E: Distribution of cave burials along the Qi river

Among all southern tributaries of the Yangzi, the Qi river area contains the biggest proportion of inscribed and datable caves, and the highest concentration of rock-cut cemeteries of the novel type. Survey was led on several sections of the river and its tributaries to get a closer understanding of the distribution of cliff cemeteries (Fig.10).
<figure><img src="image_11.png" /><figcaption>Fig.10. Map of surveyed burial sites along the Qi river. The dots show previously identified Type 2 sites from the Qijiang District Archaeological Office database, and the ones I was able to visit are shown in the triangles.</figcaption></figure>

The Qi river stands in between two major axes: to its west, the Chishui river, corresponding to Han period Jianwei commandery, and to its east, the Wu river, or Ba commandery. Both commanderies were founded in the Western Han dynasty and supplied large scale settlements such as Huangjinwan by the 1st century BCE. Just like those two rivers, it functioned as a route of penetration into the plateau, combining navigable sections with side valley routes or mountain passes, but no historical source mentions this route for the late 2nd century CE.

Later accounts (circa 7th century CE) report that the Qi river connected the Yangzi river to the highlands in steps, spaced about 150 to 200 li (50 to 65km) (Yan Gengwang, 1986 p. 1298). This route, headed upstream, also formed a 1300 li (420km) long loop going back to the Yangzi, by following the Wu river downstream. The circuit connected both ends of the Yangzi gorges to the two plains of Sichuan and Hubei-Hunan, with backstage access to centers for trade and industry located directly on the Yangzi. The Qi river's role in connecting plain and highlands between the 5th and 13th centuries CE, casts some light on the structure of its course. Within these 500 years, several stages of administrative rule founded short-lived seats, which were readily abandoned and displaced further upstream the Qi river, reinforcing the impression of a "moving wall", a frontier that would gradually climb up the piedmont towards the highlands. Zhenxi for example, progressively develops as a jimi (a loosely controlled frontier entity) and a 'camp/mountain stronghold' (zhai寨) serving the Nanping commandery (Songshi 49, p. 2229), a land reputed to be inhabited by barbarians (Tong Dian 183, Section gu Jingzhou). Nanping has been associated since Tang times with a particularly active branch of the Lao people (Lao僚 or Nanping man 南坪蠻), whose influence apparently extended well beyond the course of the Qi river (Jiu Tangshu 19, p. 666 and Jiu Tangshu 174, p. 4519). Apart from its military function as an outpost, Zhenxi also stood out as a market for horse trade under the Song. The administrative history of the Qi river course corresponds to the "long process of middle ground" evoked in the historical introduction. It indicates which sections of the Qi river played a significant role at the scale of a millennium: the mouth of the river, the middle course plain, and the gateways to the highlands. Based on these observations, we can identify significant territorial units to group rock-cut cemeteries along the Qi river (Fig. 11).
<figure><img src="image_12.png" /><figcaption>Fig.11. Groups of cemeteries along the tributaries of the Qi river.</figcaption></figure>

A first area is more populous, with regularly spaced sites between the Tonghui and Pu, both tributaries of the middle Qi river (frame no.1). The three following groups of sites are strongly connected to single tributaries of the Qi river, with one group along the Qingxi 清溪 (frame no.2), one group along the Guofu 郭扶 (frame no.3), and a last group clustered on the Zhenxi 淀溪 tributary (frame no.4). The fifth and last frame includes the fewer and sparser sites of the upper Qi river (frame no.5).

With its meandering narrow bed, the Qingxi functions as a handy corridor for those who reject the choice of following the Qi river main course and prefer a backstage route leading to the course of the Xishui river in present day Guizhou province. By providing access to the Xishui, the Qingxi tributary constitutes a transversal, secondary connection between the Qi river and the next southern tributary of the Yangzi on its east, the Chishui river. The Qingxi river yields the earliest dated cave of our inscribed caves' dataset, and has the longest record of occupation (106 CE to 220 CE). A time lapse of occupation from 165 to 210 CE is even available for one of the surveyed groups of burial caves, Baishulin. This 45-years-period, about two generations, corresponds to a group of only three caves. On the Qingxi river, along a 20 km- section of the river, 20 sites are known, with a total of 128 caves. If we count about two individuals per cave, we could estimate a population density of 13 inhabitants/sq.km. Another distinctive trait here is the treatment of cave openings: the Qingxi tributary valley contains more than half of triple-recessed cave openings in the whole Qi river area. This suggests that extra care was taken to refine the outer appearance of caves along that specific river course. This element, together with the meandering topography of the deep-cut riverbed, contributes to create peculiar conditions of visibility and intervisibility.

The Zhenxi tributary brings together several interesting aspects: as said above, it is an administrative, military and trade node traceable in transmitted sources, on a point where navigability on the Qi river becomes problematic. It offered a potential land route connecting valleys down to the Yangzi river through an elevated plateau at 500m of elevation, against a mountainous chain reaching 1,300m, with plenty of arable land. The valley is a raised area of flat land of considerable extent if compared to the type of land available south of the Yangzi. This plateau, propitious for agriculturalist groups to settle in, could accommodate a numerous population and larger agglomerations, as it is reflected in the size and distribution of the
cemeteries. The Zhenxi river possesses the biggest cemetery and densest concentration of Eastern Han period caves in the whole course of the Qi river. Xinlianjiao, with 87 tombs, is far above the next bigger cemetery, Jiepai (47 tombs). The settlers were active in the area around the year 165 CE (dated inscription in Songlinggang), but no measure of the time lapse of occupation is available. The Songlingang site has niche-like caves, which display carved depictions on the back wall that are visible from the foot of the cliff. Only a few hundred metres separate the cemeteries, located on both sides of the Zhenxi tributary. Funerary sites are here closer to one another than in any other tributary of the Qi river. Five sites, with a total of 142 caves, are clustered in an area of less than 3 sq.km. If we count about two individuals per cave, the estimated population density would be around 100 inhabitants per sq.km.

About 60km upstream the middle Qi river, one encounters a coarser mountain geomorphology interrupted by several waterfalls. Navigation becomes impossible upstream present day Dongxi district town. Upstream Dongxi, more than a hundred rapids interrupt the course of the Qi river, at intervals of roughly one kilometre. Because of these obstacles to navigation upstream its haven, the town of Dongxi historically acted as a portage and as a salt trade center. Dongxi holds remains of salt merchant residencies from Ming and Qing times. Stone paved paths dating to these later periods connect the Zhenxi valley to the point where the tributary meets the Qi river, where there used to be a portage point. Although the Zhenxi is surrounded by mountains, it leads to corridors running between mountainous ridges to the east, which connect the Zhenxi valley directly to the course of the Yangzi, instead of following the meandering course of the Qi river. The corridors continue southwards, which places the valley in a privileged position in terms of transportation and trade on the land route connecting the Yangzi to the highlands.

The distribution of burial sites along the tributaries of the Qi river corresponds to sharp
differences in cemetery size and density, as well as cave type. By comparing the characteristics
of cemeteries along side routes such as the Qingxi valley, and obligatory passages such as the
Zhenxi plateau, one notices that different types of cemeteries are found along riverine routes of
different degrees of connectivity. Larger cemeteries are found on well-connected routes, and
smaller but visually striking and densely distributed groups of burial caves are found on side
routes. In the next section, a profile of the cave builders south of the Yangzi is attempted, based
on the characteristics of burial sites and the connectivity of river routes.

6 Interpretation

A combination of personal survey, archaeological evidence and historical evidence was used in
this study to refine our understanding of southward routes in relation to the cliff tombs south of
the Yangzi. The riverine routes formed a frontier network with nodes connected by sections of
about 30 km accross rugged and enclaved terrains. The area around the Jinsha, Chishui and Wu
rivers supported myriad smaller paths forming a capillary network, formed by “mute” minor
southern tributaries, unmentioned in written sources, such as the Changning, the Xishui, the Qi,
the Longtan and Jian’an rivers. The branches of this network are represented in dotted lines on
the map below (Fig.12). This study showed that there was not one single direct route between
the Sichuan basin and the highlands, putting the disproportionate importance of *Bodao* into
perspective. Itineraries in the lower courses of these tributaries were quite flexible up to the
upper Wu river loop. Following a tree-like structure, they reached intermediary Han period
centres such as Bi (modern Zunyi), Pingyi (modern Bijie) or Zhuti (modern Zhaotong) before
proceeding further into the highlands. Once on the highlands, major trunks went across Dian,
to reach the Mekong river system until present-day Vietnam (Jiaozhi 交趾), or across the
presumed territory of Yelang, to reach the Pearl river system until present-day Guangdong province (ancient *Nanyue*).

<figure><img src="image_13.png" /><figcaption>Fig.12. Minor routes (dotted lines) among major routes (grey lines) south of the Yangzi. White dots and triangles stand for funerary sites, settlements and routes related to the Han imperial presence, grey dots (Type 2) for the alternative burial caves and secondary riverine routes investigated here.</figcaption></figure>

Between the 2nd and 3rd century CE, groups dwelling in the piedmont areas, between plains and highlands, felt the need to display their presence in the landscape, and invested their resources into tomb-building. The distribution of this frontier funerary expression starts from the foot of the Himalayas down to the karstic areas east of the Yangzi Gorges, about 500km apart. Because of the presence of inscriptions in Chinese language, the use of iron tools for the needs of rock-cutting, and select similarities in design and iconography with carvings found in the Sichuan basin and elsewhere in the Han Empire, a strong cultural influence from imperial and provincial centers is undeniable. However, important divergences from Han funerary customs can be pointed at. In contrast to funerary traditions along major tributaries, the characteristics of burial caves found along secondary streams are the following: caves are cut into vertical cliffs, they are raised above ground with no trench or corridor, visible cave entrances are enhanced by carved recessions, smaller-sized caves sometimes adopt a niche or tunnel-like shape, linear-carved outdoor depictions and inscriptions are present, with no direct reference to the domestic sphere. In the remaining areas of the empire, such tombs generally remain hidden. By contrast to these concerns, the builders of caves south of the Yangzi felt secure enough not to hide their tombs, did not fear robbery, or had good reasons to think they would not be robbed. A potential explanation for such sense of security could be the immediate proximity of settlements, which would allow relatives to constantly look after the cemeteries and protect them. Yet, no artefact was found, caves are not equipped with the kind of niches which usually house artefacts, and doorframes are generally devoid of sealing devices. It is possible that nothing was placed inside the tomb, no riches or objects for the afterlife, and that this fact was enough to discourage
robbers. This last point would be one more argument showing that cave burials south of the Yangzi do not intent to reproduce a domestic context in the afterlife, unlike “Han tombs”.

If we follow the argument that the furnishing of the burial is not the main concern south of the Yangzi, the body and tomb itself and the effort invested in it should represent the actual value, a value that can hardly be robbed. Conversely, a cave can be sold and re-used. The cave itself being this unmoveable value, its owners could feel compelled to make it visible, or even ostentatious, perhaps even with doors made in perishable materials that did not survived to this day, which would explain the present absence of closure device. Another value attached to the tomb is that of storing the body and maintaining it accessible to the living, possibly to be opened repeatedly over time, and as something the relatives can capitalize on. The cave, in that sense, is not an eternal abode, but a temporary location, a passage. To the groups south of the Yangzi, the cave together with the body it contained were possibly valuable in themselves, and represented legitimacy over both worldly and otherworldly territories.

The strategies adopted by frontier communities south of the Yangzi left a durable impact on the landscape. When several generations acted on the same site, the consequences of placing a cave went beyond the single moment of individual choice. In this respect, the structure of the cemetery mirrors that of the village, or the living community (Brown, 1995 p. 10-11). Apart from preserving the memory of a dead relative, the cave was the result of a concerted action from a living group, also referred to as the “tomb owning group” (Bloch, 197 p. 122). The group has concrete duties in maintaining and transmitting its property, i.e. the caves, which “use value” or even “exchange value” added to their intrinsic value in terms of production effort. Such a group, embedded in the landscape, gradually translates genealogy into “topogeny”, expressing affiliation through geographic proximity (Fox, 2006 p. 89). Because the strong presence of the caves in the landscape mark the establishment of a specific group, they could express the legitimation of exclusive or shared control of water or land resource by the groups who built them (Goldstein, 1976 p. 61).

The funerary landscape south of the Yangzi is a resource for the construction of situational, locational or topographic identities. The emergence of an alternative funerary expression corresponding to transportation hubs, portage towns or mountain passes, suggests that the historical role of the cave builders was related to networks of communication and trade. The epigraphic inscriptions found in 50 caves point at a moment of weakened imperial power between the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. For that period, historical sources report administrative fragmentation, the uprise of specific social groups and the development of alternative territorial dynamics. When primary trade centers on the Chishui and Wu rivers established in Western Han period declined, we know that the side valleys and second order tributaries displayed a peculiar kind of funerary expression. But how did trade function on those secondary routes, powering novel funerary expressions when the empire faced fragmentation? What do we know of trade centers on the frontier?

Polanyi’s definition of a “port of trade” resonate in some of its aspects with the situation encountered south of the Yangzi (Polanyi, 1963). Geographically, the port of trade functions as an enclave located on the border of two ecological regions, such as highland and plain, desert or sea. Located on the margin of a state-controlled territory, the port of trade is an enclave of “foreign” presence involved in complex cross-cultural trade (Brown, 1975), an interface between societies practicing different economic organizations. Its main function concerns the transportation of goods, the protection of caravans, transporters and merchants, the regulation of movement, competition and rivalry. Another useful concept for interpreting the groups of
cave burials south of the Yangzi is the “gateway community”, a form of socioeconomic organization that emerges with the intensification of interregional exchange (Hirth, 1978 p. 36). When located at strategic points for controlling and facilitating the flow of merchandises, gateway communities start prospering by acting as an interface between external trade routes and major markets. External trade routes reach the gateway community through a “dendritic” network, “in areas where the population is dispersed, transportation is difficult or underdeveloped, and where there is a strong external economic orientation” (Hirth, 1978 p. 37). This model is useful in that ecological barriers, natural corridors of trade and cultural differences are factors of growth for the gateway community, while they are usually presented as an obstacle from the point of view of the inhabitants of regional settlements in the core area. In his dynamic understanding of “gateway communities, Hirth notes that competition can arise from the hinterland and correspond to a decline of major markets. Central places in the hinterland, can gradually come to “function as alternative” (Hirth, 1978 p. 42). When primary trade centers such as Hangjinwan on the Chishui river, established in Western Han period, declined, our attention should turn to the side valleys and second order tributaries, that witness the rising role of hinterland centers in the late Han period.

What is the role of secondary tributaries where an alternative type of cemeteries is found? Settlements along the minor tributaries south of the Yangzi developed at a late stage of imperial presence. These were areas where a few centuries earlier, General Tang Meng’s expedition attempted to establish a trade route, or rather failed to control the existing betel trade route, which long predated imperial conquest. While the Han Empire managed to secure its presence along some of the main rivers south of the Yangzi, settlements along secondary tributaries probably started to supply centers on the major tributaries like Huangjinwan on the Chishui river. Capillary alliances which pre-existed these settlements most probably continued to function in the backstage of history. Secondary tributaries combined pre-existing paths and offshoots of the gateway community model. Rather than acting as second-tier, local markets, these would act as shortcuts to major trade routes. The caves’ locations could correspond to a parallel network motivated by tax avoidance and controlled by private producers. Cultural intermediaries and neighbouring groups to the Han Empire subsisted and traded in alternative ways. Their activity was a natural counterpart of official trade, transcending ethnic and political boundaries, and developing in parallel to political centers (Harnett and Dawdy, 2013 p. 38). I propose that when gaining major control over trade, these people lost their elusiveness and constructed their visual identity by selectively borrowing technological or stylistic elements of neighbouring funerary practices.

The Zhenxi valley on the upper Qi river is proposed here as an example of secondary trade center, or alternative gateways. Indeed, the Zhenxi valley stood right in-between the Chishui and Wu river routes and had privileged access to the highlands. Quieter waterways like the Qingxi tributary did not necessarily take over such a role, either because their meandering course did not ease transportation, or because they were more suitable for settling. In less well-connected locations such as the Qingxi valley on the lower Qi river, restricted exchange or a return to a form of autarky possibly took over, enhancing local particularities. As suggested by their absence from the front stage of history, some minor routes remained out of step, while others specialized in long-distance trade. The fortune of these alternative gateways is variable and fragile, as they take advantage from the larger polities they border but their rugged and interstitial land holds limited resources (Connolly and Bevan, 2013 pp.234-236). Such locations retain attractive qualities that the main routes do not have, such as available land, outstanding landscapes, a higher character of privacy, and controllable access to other secondary routes. The harsher environment and segmental nature of paths in mountainous areas suggest
“alternative logics of mobility”, or a parallel network of routes (Frachetti, 2017 p.197). The resulting landscapes’ “hyper-fragmentation” is reflected in the interspersed distribution of “Han tombs” and alternative burial practices across different types of fluvial routes and valleys.

Along minor tributaries in the buffer zone between plains and highlands, communities developed specific cultural expressions such as the caves investigated here, in a landscape of their own. They coexisted with major routes and hubs, but stood on transversal connections between these routes, perhaps less exposed to the on-going process of imperial weakening. It is even possible that their blooming precisely at a time of weakness of major river courses points at the strategic advantage of being located in side valleys and behind mountainous barriers. Two separated geographies coexist and overlap, occupying the same landscape, a kind of fragmentation made possible by centuries of colonization (Mbembe, 2006 p.45). Administrative compartmentation enhances pre-existing topographical fragmentation and ethnic diversity on its margins. Contiguous areas contain radically different populations with the creation of inner frontiers between mutually exclusive spaces. At this point, funerary expressions become useful and even necessary to construct one's presence in the landscape. The dead and the spaces they occupy become resources for post-contact groups.

7 Conclusions

This study gathered the historical, archaeological data as well as geographic and material evidence from the field, susceptible to elucidate a previously unnoticed variant of rock-cut cemeteries in Southwest China. Minor tributaries and their inhabitants occupied the backstage of major political and commercial axis, forming a secondary trade network. In a context of political weakening, these locations potentially came to replace Han period “gateway communities”, which were located at strategic points of the trade network on major tributaries of the Yangzi river. The novel type of rock-cut cemeteries is part of the production of an alternative landscape, and the typology of the caves and carvings correspond to the visual identity chosen by the communities at hand.

The narrative and profile proposed here for the cave builders and their motivations remains hypothetical in many ways. Future collaborations between archaeological offices across administrative boundaries will help in identifying connections between groups of caves, usually located only a few kilometers away. With more groups of similar caves still to be surveyed, and a better understanding of settlements along southern tributaries of the Yangzi river, additional evidence will result in finer dating and a greater confidence about the historical role of the cave builders.

Beyond the context of imperial collapse, where short-lived communities with strong territorial claims emerge and narratives of conflict seem plausible, the caves south of the Yangzi are also presented here as a by-product of culture contact reaching far into relational or comparative history. Eventually, the 2nd and 3rd century caves that appear so distinctive with regards to “Han tombs”, might appear as one historical adaptation among the wider phenomenon of cliff burials, shared by several groups in South China and Southeast Asia from at least late Warring States to Ming times, and spanning more than two millennia. Similar funerary expressions negotiated at different stages of frontier history possibly corresponded to comparable configurations of culture contact and exchange among the canyons and plateaus of Southwest China. Using the historical window opened by this study as a basis, it is hoped that future studies will find comparable relationships between frontier regimes and funerary landscapes along riverine routes. Through the long process of middle ground in the acculturation on the Southwest frontier, the distribution
of highly visible cave burials would tell us about moving frontiers, shifting centres of power and
the varying importance of specific riverine routes.

**Funding:**

This work was supported by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange (2017), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and the Research Funds of Renmin University of China 19XNB024 (2018-2021).

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