From tomb-keeper to tomb-occupant: the changing conceptualisation of dogs in early China

Abstract Dogs have played a vital and varied role in the social history of early China. Whether used as source food, hunting-aid, or sacrificial victim, dogs were intimately connected with human life death. The placement significance dismembered slaughtered tombs been scholarly interest across twentieth twenty-first centuries. However, less attention has paid to sources which present us spectrum concerns surrounding treatment after their Should they be consumed, discarded, buried? Which deserving burial, how such burials viewed by commentators? By analysing textual, archaeological, material sources, this article explores changing conceptualisation death through medium tomb, showing transition from tomb-keeper tomb-occupant reflects an increasingly anthropomorphic view canine potential moral fibre medieval period.