The Dated Tomb of the Tang Dynasty at Xuecun Site in Xingyang City,Henan Province

In 2005 to 2006,Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology excavated a group of tombs of the Tang Dynasty at Xuecun Site in Xingyang City.The M2 in Excavation Zone IV is a well-preserved joint tomb of a couple buried in late Tang Dynasty yielding a set of epitaph and a set of grave goods including porcelains and potteries and so on.From the text of the epitaph,we know that the occupants were Song Hua,who was the Bingma Fushi(deputy commander)of Heyang Army and acting Taichang Qing(chief minister of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices),and his wife(nee Yan)interred in 820 A.D.The epitaph reflected that Song Hua was a member of the Wei-Bo(present-day southern Hebei and northern Henan)Faction,which provided new material for the researches on the situation of the military regional usurpation and the hierarchy of the middle and lower-ranked military officials in the middle and late Tang Dynasty.Meanwhile,the unearthed ceramics are also the references for the chronological and typological researches on the ceramics of the Tang Dynasty.