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Women in Turfan during the Sixth to Eighth Centuries: A Look at their Activities Outside the Home

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2010

Deng Xiaonan
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Some historians who study medieval Chinese women have tended to neglect the situation of common women who stayed at home dealing with family affairs, preferring instead to examine the far more complete documentation on exceptional women who gained power or prominence outside the home in the largely male-dominated world. In recent years, as more historians have paid closer attention to women's daily life in medieval times, they have made great breakthroughs in drawing on a multiplicity of sources (Ebrey, 1993). Yet sometimes they are still embarrassed by the problem of insufficient materials. The oasis of Turfan, lying on the Silk Road between China and India, contains the Astana-Karakhoja graveyards that have been excavated by different explorers, both Chinese and not, since the beginning of the century. The tombs contain many goods preserved by the dry desert climate, including paper shoes, belts, and hats which Chinese scholars have pieced together to form documents. This paper draws primarily on those materials shedding light on women's activities, which most historians interested in women have yet to utilize.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , February 1999 , pp. 85 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1999

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