CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

173
A group of six painted pottery female figures
Height 71 -86 (28- 33 7s)
Tang Dynasty, early to mid-eighth century CE
From the tomb at Hansenzhai, Xi'an,
Shaanxi Province
Xi'an Municipal Institute of Archaeology and
Preservation of Cultural Relics, Shaanxi Province
A large number of dated or datable tombs of the
Tang dynasty have been excavated in and around
the Tang capital near Xi'an, Shaanxi province, in
the past few decades. The funerary figurines found
in these controlled excavations have allowed for
a remarkably complete survey of the interests and
tastes of the Tang aristocracy. Among the developments
that can be traced in these figures are
changes in the ideal of feminine beauty.
The ruling clan and many of the elite of the
Tang dynasty came from a group of aristocratic
families from the northwest region of China —
products of centuries of intermarriage and exchange
that resulted from foreign conquest of this
region shortly after the fall of the Han dynasty in
221 CE; their links to non-Chinese people and social
customs remained strong. Nowhere was this diversity
more apparent than in attitudes toward women
and the relative freedom they were allowed. Figures
from the Jinxiang tomb depict women mounted on
horseback — playing musical instruments, participating
in hunts or in polo matches (see cats. 170,
171) — or performing physically demanding dances.
The women are thin and wear tight-fitting clothing
appropriate for the activities in which they are
engaged, testimony to an athletic ideal of feminine
beauty particular to the period.
By the middle of the eighth century, however,
that ideal had changed: The women depicted in
paintings and in mingqi are plump; they wear elaborate,
loose-fitting garments and decidedly impractical
shoes — dress ill-suited to a strenuous, active
life. This change is only one of many signs that
501 TANG POTTERY FIGURES