XI’AN, CHINA—A cemetery where maids of the imperial palace were buried during the Tang Dynasty (619–907 A.D.) has been found. “There are two types of maids according to the epitaphs. Five of them died of old age, and the rest were ‘Wanggongni’—maids who became nuns because the emperor they served died before them,” explained Liu Daiyun of the Shaanxi Archaeology Research Institute. The women had been buried with lacquer, bronze, and stone items; animal figures; and bronze waistbands.
Maids’ Cemetery Uncovered in Western Xi’an
News February 27, 2013
Recommended Articles
Off the Grid November/December 2026
San Agustín, Colombia
Letter from Cape Canaveral November/December 2026
Dawn of the Space Age
Archaeologists have made surprising discoveries spanning 3,000 years at the birthplace of American space exploration
Features November/December 2026
Kingdom of Fortresses
How diverse and far-flung Iron Age chiefdoms united to challenge the Assyrian Empire
Features November/December 2026
A Tomb of One's Own
Life behind the scenes in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings
-
Features January/February 2013
Neolithic Europe's Remote Heart
One thousand years of spirituality, innovation, and social development emerge from a ceremonial center on the Scottish archipelago of Orkney
Adam Stanford/Aerial Cam -
Features January/February 2013
The Water Temple of Inca-Caranqui
Hydraulic engineering was the key to winning the hearts and minds of a conquered people
(Courtesy Tamara L. Bray) -
Letter from France January/February 2013
Structural Integrity
Nearly 20 years of investigation at two rock shelters in southwestern France reveal the well-organized domestic spaces of Europe's earliest modern humans
-
Artifacts January/February 2013
Pacific Islands Trident
A mid-nineteenth-century trident illustrates a changing marine ecosystem in the South Pacific
(Catalog Number 99071 © The Field Museum, [CL000_99071_Overall], Photographer Christopher J. Philipp)