Han epoch burials of common people (a case study of archaeological sites from Shandong province)

The burial monuments comprise of the most important sources when studying the history of the Han dynasty. Most ancient tombs that are be one ing studied by archeologists dispose the life of wealthy social classes, while the knowledge about the common people is very limited or just inaccessible. Precisely this distortion does not allow the specialists to reconstruct the complete picture of life during the Han Empire. That is why the studying of burials is one of the most vital aims of the Han archeology. According their constructions the graves of the pecommon riod under investigation can be divided into three major groups: without sarcophagus, with a stone sarcophagus and with a brick sarcophagus. The first group is a burial without a coffin when a dead body was wrapped in mat or cloth. The burials in the second group the most diverse; they be single or group (buried a within the or different times). Burials of the are certain groups differed fro can m each other bythe numones ber of the corpses,the o same rientation of the bodies, burial items and the location of them. The burial implements could be laid directly into the coffin or sarcophagus of the buried, but more often were put into the niches dug in earth wall or into separate boxes tagged to the sarcophagi. These differences have only a social, not a chronological significance. Dating of sites and monitoring of transformation are possible only on the basis of grave goods.