Planning of Imperial Mausoleums

Professor Yang Zhefeng gives a lecture on the "new discovery" of the planning of imperial mausoleums.

The Western Han dynasty (206BC-8AD) left nine huge imperial mausoleums to the north of its capital Chang’an （长安）. Some scholars believe that the distributional pattern of these mausoleums reflects, totally or partially, the application of the Western Zhou Zhao-mu principle (昭穆制度); other scholars believe that their locations were randomly chosen. Few scholars, however, have carefully examined the spatial arrangement of these mausoleums. Using the contemporary geographic and topographic coordinate system, Professor Yang Zhefeng has found a baseline in the planning of these imperial mausoleums. This talk will present this “new discovery”, the original vision and ritual-related considerations.

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Professor Yang Zhefeng is a Han archaeologist teaching at the Department of Archaeology, Beijing University. He is currently a Harvard-Yenching visiting scholar.