Dulan Listed by World Monuments Watch
By Bruce Doar
China Archaeology and Art Digest
Issue February 2000
Feb 02, 2000 - 02:21 PM CDT 

The Dulan County Tibetan Royal Tomb Group in Qinghai province was listed by World Monuments Watch as one of the world's One Hundred Most Endangered Sites 2000 


In September 1999 the Dulan County Tibetan Royal Tomb Group in Qinghai province was listed by World Monuments Watch as one of the world's One Hundred Most Endangered Sites 2000, a bi-annual and permanent listing established in 1997. The World Monuments Watch is a non-profit advocacy organisation, funded in the main by American Express and designed to call international attention to sites at risk. The site was nominated for listing by the editors of China Archaeology and Art Digest. 

Discovered and initially excavated in 1982-1985 and only intermittently excavated since then, the royal tomb group in the valley of the Reshui river in Dulan county has been identified as housing kings of the Tubo-Tuyuhun kingdom that dominated this area of western Qinghai for three hundred and fifty years after the Tibetans conquered the Tuyuhun around 663. The Tuyuhun kingdom was originally founded by an ethnic group from north-eastern China, the Murong-Xianbei, and the various burial customs, including the practice of sacrificial burials of horses, sheep and dogs, that prevailed at the Dulan sites are believed to reflect a mixture of Chinese, Tibetan and Xianbei cultural influences. 

The silk fabrics found in the Dulan tombs far surpass the finds at Dunhuang, the Astana graves in Turfan, Famen Temple and the Shoso-in for sheer quantity, beauty of design and quality of workmanship. Varieties include brocades, thin damask silk, silk gauze, kesi silk, tulle, sheer silks or silk gauze and coarse silk. A number of fabrics were the first examples of such types to be discovered in China - brocade with gold thread, particular types of kesi and mosaic appliquedamask with raised designs, as well as pure white damask. More than 500 examples of valuable fabrics have been found to date, and some 20% of these are believed to be of Central Asian, western Asian or Byzantine manufacture. One brocade embroidered with a Pahlavi inscription is the only example found anywhere in the world of an 8th century Persian brocade with an embroidered inscription. These discoveries testify to Dulan's former strategic importance on the Silk Road through Qinghai province. The road west from Dulan leads to Golmud, alternatively from there to Lhasa or Dunhuang. 

Over the last decade some one thousand tumuli undoubtedly concealing tombs have been identified in Dulan county, but only a handful have been excavated, most recently by the Archaeology Department of Peking University, whose excavation ended in September this year. The greatest threat to the Dulan tombs has come from tomb robbers who target the valuable ancient textiles. On 5 November 1999 China Daily reported the arrest of 21 suspected tomb robbers in Dulan county, and local police seized 31 historical relics, mostly textiles, dating from the 5th to 10th centuries. Attending a conference at the Abegg Foundation in Switzerland in October 1999, Xu Xinguo, director of the Qinghai Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute, told delegates that textiles stolen from tombs in the Dulan area can be seen in many collections in Europe. 

None of the finest examples of Dulan textiles that have a known provenance have ever been exhibited, even in China. Only several modest examples were shown in a recent archaeological exhibition in Beijing's National Museum of Chinese History that highlighted the most important archaeological discoveries of the last 50 years. 

A number of textiles discovered by Xu Xinguo in two small tombs in Makari Canyon in Dulan county in 1998 are currently undergoing restoration at the laboratories of the Chinese Cultural Relics Institute in Beijing, and this work will be completed in the main by late 2000. These include a spectacular example of the Central Asian fabric known as adries which is still produced today in Xinjiang and Kazakstan, a jacket with distinctive Sogdian motifs and a saddle cloth fashioned from resilient silk brocade with Central Asian motifs that has clearly seen signs of wear and yet has remained in excellent condition. 

The July-September 1999 excavation in Dulan by the Archaeology Department of Peking University, funded by Roger E. Covey's Tang Foundation, focused only on ancillary tombs in the river valley opposite the main tomb, M1, at the Dulan site. 

To date, only the superstructure of tomb M1 has been excavated. Geologists have indicated that there are further chambers beneath the tomb, and the tomb and its environs have been mapped using GPS by Professor Mark Aldenderfer, a specialist in alpine archaeology from the University of California at Santa Barbara, who is also conducting DNA testing on human teeth excavated in Komari Canyon in 1998. This testing will be among the first DNA testing of Chinese archaeological material, and the finds are eagerly awaited. 

Now that world attention is focused on the site it is to be hoped that efforts to preserve the rich ancient heritage of the Tibetan and other ethnic groups in the Dulan area can be carried out in earnest. As well as the numerous tomb sites, there are several ancient city sites inside the littoral of the Tsaidam Basin as well as a number of sites that may be Tubo fortresses or monasteries. The local preservation efforts are hampered by a shortage of funds, and the influx of new settlers into the area under a World Bank funded development scheme will present archaeologists and conservationists in Dulan with further headaches. 

Excerpted from China Archaeology and Art Digest, February 2000 
Copyright 2000, Bruce Doar, China Archaeology and Art Digest