Jiangling Mashan Chu 江陵馬山楚墓 PT 1: Introduction
Hello from the Motherland of Tea Eggs, I have made it back to the land of mangoes & mosquitoes. My history phd aunt helped me infiltrate National Taiwan University's library and now I have Expensive Books which I need to take notes on before I have to return them, which means I get to infodump on here, everyone say thank you ayi.
There is A LOT of information on this so I will be splitting this up into multiple posts as usual and linking them.
TABLE OF CONTENTS AS OF 6/9/25:
--- Pt 1 (this post): Introduction - Briefly introducing the tomb site, a little bit of historical context, and the garments found in it in brief.
--- Pt 2 (wip): Construction & Material - Deep dive into the individual patterns, measurements, and materials of each garment. Might have to split into multiple posts because of the image limit, will adjust as I write.
--- Pt 3 (wip): Cultural-Historical Implications - What this site tells us about culture during the Warring States and the evolution of Han clothing, will draw heavily from academic papers & expand to discuss further hanfu things
--- i might do an annotated bibliography or source analysis or something??? idk lmao
*quick note about sources b4 we start
Most of the information in this post is from 江陵馬山一號楚墓 (Chu Tomb No. 1 at Mashan in Jiangling) by 湖北省荊州地區博物館 (Hubei Province Jingzhou Museum) published by 文物出版社 (Cultural Relics Publishing House, Beijing) in 1982. The last time this copy of the book was checked out was in 1992, my aunt says the book must be very happy to have someone study it so closely for the first time in more than thirty years lmao. Idk how ISBN numbers work for super old reports like this but here's the publishing info printed if anyone wants to figure it out:
src: took these pics on my kitchen counter
The book is lowkey falling apart at the seams and covered in dust so this was all done under the protection of a mask & glasses but I'm pretty sure that most available copies by now are gonna be like that. Afaik there's one copy in NTU's library and then at least one in the National Palace Museum library (Taipei); idk how to find things in China though. The book is in simplified Chinese. Images & info that do not have otherwise cited sources are from this report.
In addition, there are a number of online papers and articles that I'll be using to supplement information and images from in later posts. The other works cited will be listed at the bottom of each post, as well as cited in-text/caption. Ok im done lmao
江陵馬山一號楚墓/Jiangling Horse Mountain No. 1 Chu Tomb was a small burial vault discovered early January 1982 by Hubei Provincial Museum in 荊州 (Jingzhou), a city in southern Hubei province.
src from here because the photos I took from the book were shitty
Over the course of several days, several groups including the Hubei Provincial Museum, Jingzhou Museum, Jiangling Archaeological Relic Group, China Museum of History, Archaeological Relic Publishing House, Academy of Archaeology and History (I am butchering the hell out of these translations of organization names) etc. participated in the digging and cleaning of the site, finally finishing on January 16th, 1982.
They found a small wooden burial vault with a mostly disintegrated body and nearly a hundred grave goods like a bamboo fan, wood figurines, jewelry, tapestries, and more.
The body was dressed in three robes and wrapped in 13 layers of silk. Some of these layers were coverlets called; the rest were extra robes. The clothing garments excavated from this burial are the some of the oldest clothing relics in existence, and generally considered the oldest hanfu relics period*.
*a handful people don't consider the Warring States period clothing relics hanfu because the Warring States happened before the Han Dynasty which is where the term 'han' comes from, but afaik most people are chill with it
Most of the artifacts from 馬山楚墓 are now in the collection of 荊州博物館/jing1 zhou1 bo2 wu4 guan3/Jingzhou Museum. Unfortunately they don't have a full digital database but they do have a couple highlighted artifacts on their website.
Location & Historical Context
This tomb is located in Jingzhou, Hubei Province, close to the Jinan ancient city of Chu, a nationally protected cultural area on the south side of Jinan town. This is was one of the capitals of the Chu Kingdom during the Warring States period, and several other tombs have been unearthed nearby. We focus on this one because it’s the only one with clothing relics.
The location of the tomb is 16km Southeast of Jiangling city and 8km away from the Jinan ancient city (pg 1)
The site is estimated to have been from mid- to late- Warring States Period (~475—~221BCE), the final stretch of the Zhou Dynasty before unification by Qin Shi Huang (yeah, that guy).
At this time there were seven main states: Qin (like the Qin in Qin Shi Huang), Qi, Chu, Yan, and the three Jins (Han, Wei, and Zhao). The kingdom of Chu was located in the southern part of today's China, encompassing the Hubei and Hunan provinces. It was annexed to the Qin in 223BCE.
人物龍鳳圖，a Warring States Period silk painting unearthed from 陳家大山楚墓 in Changsha, Hunan depicting a female shaman (img from Google Arts & Culture)
Chu culture is well-known for shamanism or 巫教/wu1 jiao1, a practice of communicating with spirits and deities interwoven with some Taoist and Confucian concepts. Most shamans were women—the motif of women being associated with better spiritual connection pops up many times in Zhou Dynasty literature.
Random aside: there's a lot of artwork out there depicting shamanism as well as literature: the 楚辭/chu3 ci2/Songs of Chu, usually attributed to 屈原/qv1 yuan2/Qu Yuan, is a very well-known poem anthology that uses a lot of shamanistic imagery and allegory to describe the speaker's complicated relationship with his 'beauty,' usually interpreted as the king that he served at the time. 離騷/li2 sao1 is the (long as fuuuuuck) part that I read for one of my classes. It's very interesting but also an absolute headache to read because the language is so old that it's pretty much incomprehensible even to native Chinese speakers.
Bamboo fan, one of the grave goods from 馬山楚墓 (彩版XXXII' (10))
Visually, Chu artwork tends to embrace bold contrast and deep colors, red and black in particular. Many of their patterns are somewhat geometric, but also somewhat delicate, like close-set filigree. Dragons, phoenixes, and birds were commonly depicted as part of a pattern, but they don't always look the same as the creatures that you might imagine today—many of their dragons, for example, still had wings, which later Chinese dragons do not have.
It's stated in the 漢書/han4 shu1/"Book of Han" that “布帛廣二尺二寸為幅，“ or "two chi and two cun of silk makes a fu." 幅/fu2 is the name for a width of a roll of fabric (the width that's set by the loom's size). Two chi and two cun is approximately 50cm in today's metric units. Many analyses are done with this width in mind.
As far as archaeological burial sites go, this one is actually very small. The whole thing is basically contained within a single burial vault. The vault was made of wood, some cut radially and some cut longitudinally, standing at 2.89m long, 1.49m wide, and 1.06 tall. Multiple pieces were attached with slanted finger joints, sort of like the ones that are often used to make boxes with a laser cutter.
L: Top and side view of wooden vault (pg 5) // R: Exploded view of wooden casket (pg 7)
Inside the vault were three parts: a large main casket containing the body (棺/guan1/casket), a smaller box at the top of the casket near the head (頭箱/tou2 xiang1/head box), and a long box running alongside the body (邊箱/bian1 xiang1/side box).
The accessory boxes contained various relics including porcelain, figurines, a large woven bamboo fan, lacquer jewelry, a bamboo pillow, several bamboo scrolls, silk tapestries, and more. In total, there were 130 artifacts officially uncovered in this tomb site.
L: Line sketch of the mummy as revealed after thirteen layers of wrapped silk were removed (pg 17) // R: Bird's eye view of artifact locations in the casket (pg 10)
As for the main casket, the body uncovered at this site was mostly just bones by now, and there weren’t enough inscriptions or information to figure out their family or name, but they managed to determine that the body belonged to a ~160cm tall woman who likely died between the ages of 40 and 45. Her own hair (15cm long) was very well-preserved, along with an attached fake hair piece (40cm long). These were twisted into an updo and held by a wooden hair pin.
Our main relics of interest, however, are the robes, which—along with some fabric body pieces—were used to wrap up the corpse in a total of thirteen layers. Some of these layers were silk coverlets that the report called 衾/qin1, others were full robes.
Since most of the robes and fabrics were used to wrap around the corpse, only a few of the artifacts were actually worn on the woman’s body: three robes (N19,22,23), one skirt (N24), one pair of pants (N25), and a pair of vine shoes (N20).
We will focus on the clothing relics found in the main box, although due to extensive damage only some of them are detailed enough to write about.
Each artifact is assigned a code "N(#)" by the report as well as given a full descriptive name. Usually people just refer to the robes by code because their names are really long. I won't go over the details here, but this is quick a list of the artifacts with their names, codes, and a picture so you know what they look like.
N10 “鳳鳥花卉紋繡淺黃絹面綿袍” (彩版VI 1)
N14 “對鳳對龍紋繡淺黃絹面綿袍” (彩版VI 2)
N19 “E型大菱形紋錦面綿袍” (I pulled this pic off of 纨绮's design description. I haven't been able to find any official sources to corroborate the legitimacy of this image corresponding to N19, but 纨绮 usually does really good authentic Warring States robes recreations so I tentatively included it; however the sleeve and collar trims look striped and not diamond as the report's description suggests, so there is also the possibility that this is a variant photo of a different robe. N19 isn't as common as the other robes so its photos are harder to find.)
N13 “一鳳一龍相蟠紋繡紫紅絹單衣” (彩版V 2)
N9 “龍鳳虎紋繡羅單衣” (historical recreation pic, actual artifact is in pieces (Hunan Provincial Museum 雲想衣裳花想容))
N25 “鳳鳥花卉紋繡紅棕絹面綿袴“ （圖版XVI 1)
Preliminary Analysis of the Robes
If you want specific measurements and diagrams you can wait for the next post, but here’s a brief overview of patterns that the robes seem to follow.
All of the robes from this site were either on or around the body, some at various stages of decomposition. Some are lined, some are not. The constructions of most of the robes are similar.
In hanfu terms, all of the robes are 深衣/shen1 yi1/'deep robes,' meaning that they are long robes whose upper torso portion (上衣/shang4 yi1) and lower skirt portion (下裳/xia4 chang2) are cut separately and then sewn together (as opposed to just being a really long shirt). The top portion has a similar structure to a usual cross-collar 衫/shan1, while the bottom portion is made of several panels sewn together, similarly to a 破裙/po4 qun2/'broken skirt.'
L: Basic sketched diagram of parts of a Warring States shenyi robe // R: Rough exploded parts diagram of pattern pieces for a basic robe (both drawn by Tangtang)
All of the robes are very long with straight hems (直裾/zhi2 jv1/straight-hemmed) and cross-collared, keeping with the Han tradition of right over left (交領右衽/jiao1 ling3 you4 ren4). Many of them have decorative sleeve cuff, collar, lapel, and hem trims. Some robes have bias-cut tops or trims.
You could refer to this basic construction as a 直裾深衣/zhi2 jv1 shen1 yi1 or 直裾袍/zhi2 jv1 pao2. However, many people in the hanfu community call the robes from this site 戰國袍/zhan4 guo2 pao2/Warring States robes in order to distinguish them from Qin and Han dynasty robes.
L: 3D diagram of the 'little waist' 小腰 placement under the sleeve (马山楚墓龙凤虎纹绣罗单衣的重构初探) // R: Highlighted 'little waist' 小腰 diagram (图解中国传统服饰 by 春梅狐狸, article excerpt available online as "战国袍”溯源)
One defining factor that sets these robes apart in the opinion of most hanfu enthusiasts is the existence of the 小腰/xiao3 yao1/'little waist', a small rectangle of fabric sewn under the armpit. Most robes from this site have it; no robes from anywhere else have it. The extra piece gives the robe an extra dimension of thickness, while the rest of the robe (and pretty much all other hanfu) is constructed completely flat.
In addition, the robes from this site are known for their extremely large proportions. Many have lengths nearing or exceeding the corpse's height, with wingspans spanning almost three meters. Most of them are probably ceremonial or aristocratic robes, not dailywear for anyone who actually has to work.
Wrapping this intro post up—here are some good Warring States robes recreations by various shops so you can see what they look like:
L: 規 by 纨绮 // M: 若夙 by 佛倫 // R: 少司命 by 塵余館
I'll go into more detail about each robe and its construction and materials with diagrams and stuff next post :)
SRCES (other than the main report):
1. 马山楚墓龙凤虎纹绣罗单衣的重构初探 by 赵丰 (浙江大学教授博士),王淑娟 (中国丝绸博物馆研究馆员硕士), and 刘露 (荆州博物馆副研究馆员), published in 艺术设计研究 April 2023
2. 图解中国传统服饰 by 春梅狐狸, published by 江苏凤凰科学技术出版社 March 2019
3. 雲想衣裳花想容—楚人服飾之美 by 湖南博物館
4. 漢代的麻布及相關問題探討 by 馬怡 from 中國社會科學院歷史研究所 in December 2014
5. 春秋战国时期深衣的服饰文化探析 by 王琳 from 澳门科技大学国际学院, published December 2024
6. 复原服饰之雅，重现历史之美 published on 经济观察网 April 2025
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