An excavation project in Hwangnam-dong, an area within the South Korean city of Gyeongju, recently uncovered a tomb complex buried beneath another tomb, which was itself uncovered in 2020. Sim Hyeon-cheol, a researcher with the Gyeongju National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and a history professor at Keimyung University, told Archaeology Magazine that “many earlier wooden chamber tombs may be buried beneath the large stone mound tombs in Gyeongju.”
The newly found complex, also built for a Silla general, features six burial chambers. The Korea Heritage Service revealed the contents of one of the chambers: armor for both men and horses, a sword, a crown, teeth, and “the body of the man with his legs splayed open.”
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According to Heon-seok, the way the body in the side chamber is “splayed” suggests evidence of sunjang, a Silla mortuary ritual that involved burying a subordinate or family member alive with a higher-ranking deceased person. (Sunjang was banned in 502 CE, about halfway through the reign of the Silla Dynasty.) The area with the splayed remains and armor also included a gold earring, indicating that though this person was subordinate to the general, the subject of the ritual sacrifice was quite high-ranking himself.
Only teeth remain from the main occupant, revealing he was a man in his 30s. Nearby were parts of his crown. “The crown pieces resemble gold-bronze ornaments attributed to the Goguryeo Kingdom found in Ji’an, Jilin Province, China, and they appear to be part of a type of cap-style Silla crown,” Kim Jae-yeol, a metalwork expert at the Korea Heritage Agency, told Korea JoongAng Daily.
The restoration project in Hwangnam-dong to restore key Silla Dynasty sites has been ongoing since 2018. The tomb site and some of the 165 artifacts unearthed during this latest excavation will be open to the public through Nov. 1 as part of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum, which is hosted by South Korea this year.
