Chronology of the Central Tibetan tumulus tradition and its principal mound types

Note: It is still an open question whether, in parallel to the tumulus, older forms of burial continued to be used in the “bang so land” of Central Tibet – especially those of exposing the corpse, as indicated in the sources for the “mythical period” of the Yar lung genealogy (Hazod 2010a). Of particular interest are sites such as the one in Chum (field #0135), where a sky burial charnel ground is located immediately below the (imperial) grave field (with mostly MT-C.2 types of tombs), and next to a shrine of the local territorial god (yul lha). How to read this situation, what came first? It not least relates the question of the correlation of social structure and burial. Here it can only be said with certainty that the burial in tumulus was provided for members of the aristocratic lineages, whose internal gradations again appears to be reflected in the grave field’s landscape with its different structures and sizes of tombs.