Funerary Beds and Houses of the Northern Dynasties Shing Müller Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich A long-term supra-regional cooling of the climate from the onset of the 4 th century and result- ing famines on the steppes led to mass southbound immigrations of non-Chinese peoples from the north, northeast, northwest, and west into Chinese territory. Militarily well-orga- nized steppe confederations overran northern China and destroyed the Western Jin Empire that had already been weakened by ceaseless internal power struggles and riots. Millions of northern Chinese sought refuge in the south. As a result, the ethnic composition in regions north of the Huai River changed drastically. The cultures of the newcomers and the remaining Chinese mingled in major demographic centers, and several new customs arose. One of these are burials with so-called funerary couches and house-shaped sarcophagi, as they are termed in western literature: The body was placed directly, i.e. without a coffin, on a platform of stone or brick, seldom of wood, or, in the case of a house-shaped sarcophagus, onto a couch inside the sarcophagus. Such burials occurred only in northern China and lasted until the 8 th century. 1 To date, no similar burials have been discovered in the contemporaneous south. Funerary furniture of bricks was affordable by the middle stratum of the society. 2 Stone furniture was a class beyond that made of bricks. It was expensive, particularly because the manufacturing, including stone cutting, transporting, carving and assembling, was elaborate and time-consuming. Stone couches and house-shaped sarcophagi were therefore far more exclusive and limited to persons with a certain affluence, and/or a certain social status. This may explain why the stone objects were scarce and mainly found in capitals and sites where wealth was concentrated. In the second half of the 6 th century, the burial custom with stone funerary furniture was completely taken over by elite Sogdians or other Central Asians in China, who were quite often, but not always, holders of sabao 薩保 or tianzhu 天主, 3 i.e. the administrative or religious leaders of foreign communities. 1 One of the last house-shaped sarcophagi was dated to AD 754 and was unearthed in Xi’an. See Wang Yonggang et al. 2010. 2 Beds and houses are found only in chamber tombs. Chamber tombs, not the major burial form in the 5 th century, usually have a rectangular or square floor plan and a long, sloping dromos. Only a few are found in the so-called “knife-shaped” (daoxing 刀型) tombs, in which one tomb chamber wall was the extension of the dromos. Due to the greater effort in construction, even an earthen chamber tomb was affordable only by people with certain means. Some of these chamber tombs were built with bricks. For a medium- sized tomb in the northern China loess area, where bricks were not necessary for the stability of the tomb chamber, a brick-chambered tomb was thus an indication of wealth. 3 The tianzhu holders are Kang Ye 康業 (571), a da tianzhu 大天主, and Di Caoming 翟曹 (579), a tianzhu. The sabao holders are An Jia 安 (579) and Wirkak (580), as well as Yu Hong 弘 (592), an officer in the sabao bureau 薩保府), see Tables 2.20–21; 3.12–13, and the references there. The Chinese