Reconsidering the Auxiliary Burial Chambers of Silla Stone-piled Wooden Chamber Tombs

Abstract

According to the current chronology of the tombs of stone-piled wooden chamber tombs (SWCTs), it is widely acknowledged that the auxiliary burial chambers gradually disappear over time, and it is suggested that the uppermost elites had led the simplification of the tomb structure and the reduction of burial items. Although this decline of ostentatious funerary rites implies that a fundamental change has occurred in the mortuary practices of Silla, its process has not been specifically examined. In order to overcome this, in this paper, 2,631 earthenware excavated from 39 SWCTs (17 with auxiliary burial chambers) were analyzed to find out patterns of gravegoods. The result suggests that the two types of tombs were constructed under very different contexts and intentions for funeral ceremonies due to the differences in the types and proportion of potteries. If we view this as a temporal change, it can only be interpreted as a result of rejecting the change led by the uppermost elites, as there sure are the tombs with auxiliary burial chambers of low class in late period. However, this is very unlikely given the structure of Silla society at the time, which was evolving into a Golpum system(골품제도), the normative aspects of funeral rites. Hence it is possible that the auxiliary burial chambers existed for almost the entire period. Therefore, an alternative is suggested that the two types of SWCTs(ones with auxiliary burial chambers and ones without those) were graves of people with different personhood, for example, gender.