Interpreting the Tomb

The tombs of the Southern Song Dynasty are a key to unlocking the history of the Song era.

南宋墓葬是理解宋史的一把关键钥匙。

As a man-made space, the tomb is not only a stage for the evolution of craftsmanship-such as architectural construction and the production of artifacts-but also an arena where family ethics, funeral rites, and social customs, along with other ideas and beliefs, competed and interacted. Moreover, it is the outcome of transformations in society, politics, economic development, technological advancement, and changes in thought and ideology.

This book takes the tombs of the Southern Song Dynasty and related issues as its research subject. Centered on the Southern Song and grounded in fieldwork, it uses tombs as a focal point to explore the possibility of fully integrating fieldwork with textual sources, and archaeology with history. Within a broader historical context, it seeks to uncover and elucidate the inheritance and transformation of burial systems, social customs, and intellectual concepts, thereby conferring a systematic academic value upon the archaeology of Southern Song tombs.

墓葬作为一种人造空间，既是建筑营造、器物生产等技艺演进的展示空间，也是家族伦理、丧葬礼俗等思想观念竞逐的舞台，更是社会政治、经济发展、技术演进、思想和观念变革的结果。

本书以南宋墓葬及其相关问题为研究对象，以南宋为中心，从田野出发，以墓葬为支点，寻求田野和文献、考古学与历史学全面整合的可能性，在较长的历史发展脉络中，探索和揭示墓葬制度、社会礼俗、思想观念的传承与变迁，赋予南宋墓葬考古以较成体系的学术价值。

Zheng Jiali is Deputy Director and a Research Fellow at the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, an Adjunct Professor in the School of Humanities at Xiamen University, a member of the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties Archaeology Committee of the Archaeological Society of China, and Deputy Director of the Architectural Archaeology Committee of the Archaeological Society of China. He is engaged in field archaeology and cultural heritage preservation, with a long-standing focus on Song and Yuan dynasty archaeology and research in Zhejiang Province. His major works include Song Dynasty Tombs in Zhejiang and The Xu Weili Documents of the Southern Song Dynasty from Wuyi. In his spare time, he writes essays, and his published works in this vein include The Other Side of Archaeology, Four Accounts of Archaeology: Historical Lives in the Field, and The Archaeologist Speaks.

郑嘉励，浙江省文物考古研究所副所长、研究员，厦门大学人文学院兼职教授，中国考古学会宋元明清专业委员会委员、建筑考古专业委员会副主任。从事田野考古和文物保护工作，长期从事浙江地区宋元考古和研究，主要著作有《浙江宋墓》《武义南宋徐谓礼文书》等，业余从事杂文写作，出版有《考古的另一面》《考古四记：田野中的历史人生》《考古者说》等。