Goguryeo stone-piled tombs and their influence on the Bohai funeral rite

Goguryeo stone-piled tombs are an important part of the Goguryeo burial culture. The study of the stone-piled tombs makes it possible to better understand the Goguryeo culture and its interactions with cultural traditions of the neighboring countries. Goguryeo stone-piled tombs are mostly located in the south of Manchuria and north of the Korean Peninsula. Stone-piled tombs emerged around the beginning of the Common Era and seized to be built in the early 4th-first half of the 5th century AD. Southern Manchuria was a contact zone between the Proto-Korean and Tungus-Manchu tribes, and later between the Goguryeo and Mohe tribes. These contacts were reflected in their material and non-material culture. Bohai burials, just as Goguryeo burials at their time, were mostly built of stone. The example of stone-piled tombs shows that the tradition of using large amounts of stone for construction of tombs originated in this region in the Neolithic-Bronze Age. Goguryeo stone-piled tombs revealed specific aspects of the funeral rite typical of the south of Manchuria and north of the Korean Peninsula. They were replaced by stone chamber tombs which evolved from stone-piled tombs and spread in Bohai, that is, throughout Southern Manchuria, in the 7th-9th centuries AD. As far as construction of burial structures is concerned, changes in funeral rite occurred in a natural evolutionary way in the region. Political events made a strong impact mostly on the burials of nobility.