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- grave site. Several procession sets of small Northern Wei tomb figurines have been excavated near Luoyang, including one from the tomb of Prince Yuan Shao (fig. ix) now housed in the Luoyang Museum, and one reportedly from the tomb of Prince Yuan Xi now in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto (figs. 27,29). Although most of the Northern Wei figurines are unglazed and have bright pigments, the tomb of Sima Jinlong (d. 485) excavated in 1966 near Datong, yielded interesting black- and brown-glazed figurines.
Among the amazing variety of Northern Wei tomb figurines are tall officials, regal court ladies, dancers, musicians, banner bearers, male and female attendants, mythical creatures, animal carts, donkeys, camels, pigs and fowl; but the most graceful figures are the proud, confident horses with all their elaborate trappings. The most numerous and dominating tomb figurines of the Northern Wei appearto be military, showing several styles of armour and representing different ranks of warriors: from mounted and armoured officials to simple shield- or sword-bearing foot- soldiers. Some of the larger, more impressive warriors, having large beards and noses, appear to be members of different ethnic groups and are often depicted with a powerful, frowning face (figs. 26,27). Perhaps the reason for so many military figures was because the Northern Wei were constantly at war with the Southern Dynasties, and because the various wealthy aristocrats may have maintained their own personal armies, of which some were probably of different ethnic origins.
The small human figurines of this period were usually made of two moulds with separate moulds for the arms and heads. After the sections were put together, the mould seams were trimmed. Some tall and elegant human figurines, such as court officials and court ladies, were made from a single mould with their backs left in the rough. From this we can see that the Northern Wei had a preference for elongated and flattened forms in contrast to the bold, robust masses of the Han period. Another innovation appearing during this period was the rectangular bases added to horses and other animals, as well as to some human figurines, to support the slender and fragile legs characteristic of this time.
In 534 the Northern Wei split into two contending kingdoms �the Eastern Wei (534-550) and Western Wei (535-556). Both nations inherited the tomb figurine style and theme of processions from the Northern Wei, but their figurines appear to have grown slightly in size and have some minor changes in costume and hairstyle. One of the most impressive tomb retinues of this period are the sixty-six figures which were excavated in 1977 from a Western Wei tomb near Hanzhong in Shaanxi province.
The Eastern and Western Wei were overthrown by the Northern Qi (550-577) and the Northern Zhou (557-581), respectively. Both new nations continued the Wei example of placing a rich variety of small, grey clay figurines covered with bright pigments in their tombs. It was during the Northern Qi that the use of white buff clay for tomb figurines made an appearance alongside the grey earthenware ones. Again, the military figurines are the dominant theme in these tombs. One of the finer tomb figurine sets from this period, numbering over 400 pieces, was excavated in 1975 from the tomb of Gao Run (the twelfth son of a Northern Qi emperor) at Cixian in Hebei province.
China was reunified under the Sui dynasty (581-618) in 589. They established a system of waterways known as the Grand Canal which linked the north and south and brought about great economic growth. In the beginning, the Sui continued the previous funerary traditions of using numerous small, unglazed figurines painted with pigments, together with larger figures of officials, warriors and mythical creatures, but by the latter half of their rule they also produced some large, greenish-white glazed stoneware figurines (fig. x). These greenware figures were fired at very high temperatures. Several Sui tombs have yielded these large greenware figures, but the
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