In May-July, 1993, a tomb of the Tang period to the north of Huanghe Road inChaoyang city was excavated by the Liaoning Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology andthe Chaoyang Municipal Museum. It is a brick-built round single-chambered grave and consists of atomb-passage, gate, corridor, chamber and seepage trough. Despite its repeated robberies in early times,the tomb yielded numerous funeral objects, including 71 terra-cotta and two stone tomb-figures, twobronze mirrors and an ivory courtier' s-tablet. The tomb-figures are exquisitely and vividly made andconstitute the cream of the grave goods unearthed from Tang tombs in the Chaoyang area. Judging fromits size as well as the great number and variety of its funeral objects, the tomb must have belonged to aperson who enjoyed a high position before his death. The co-existence of terra-cotta tomb-figures withCentral Plains characteristics, clay ones in the western style and stone ones with northern features indicates that in the Tang dynasty, before the An and Shi rebellion, the Chaoyang area was an importantregion of multi-national exchange and amalgamation. The grave should be dated to the Wu Zetian reign ora little later.
