Hanging Coffins of Sichuan Province

Photo credit: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2408886/The-hanging-coffins-Sichuan-400-year-old-wooden-tombs-suspended-Chinese-cliff-face.html

 

So this week I came across hanging coffins in China. I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of this before. The ones in the pictures above are found attached the cliffs in Gongxian, Sichuan Province in China and are believed to have been placed there by the Bo people.  Hanging coffins are not found exclusively in China, they have also been found in Indonesia and the Philippines.  Some people speculate that they were hung there so that they would be within reach of the gods while others believe it was a way to keep the corpses away from animals or enemies. The coffins themselves are usually carved from a single piece of wood and have various shapes. In other parts of southern China the hanging coffins that have been discovered date to as early as the Zhou Dynasty (1027-777BC) the ones in Gongxian County are more recent and also mark the end of the hanging coffin custom.

I however find myself instantly questioning ‘how did they possibly get them up there?’ Now to answer this I had to do a bit more digging and found out that they really are not sure. One hypothesis suggested that the people carrying the coffins zig-zagged there way up the mountain by making a narrow pathway built on pegs, and then they just carried the coffin up from the bottom. The other suggested that one person would head up first and then send down a secure rope to hoist the coffin up. I personally think that it was probably a combination of methods and cant be pinned to one particular practice for every case.

 

           In the last couple weeks we have been looking at status and gender. I did some preliminary research but I think it would be extremely interesting to look at gender and status representations in these hanging burials where archaeological evidence or human remains are present. Who was buried here? What was their gender and status? Because they weren’t really buried in the conventional sense are there still grave goods? Are there  or were there decorations carved into the outside of the coffins?

 

Youtube clips:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al2c7-zoc9M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko1Tu7i5vWE

 

News article:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2408886/The-hanging-coffins-Sichuan-400-year-old-wooden-tombs-suspended-Chinese-cliff-face.html