Excavation location: Shaling Village, Datong City, Shanxi Province

Excavation unit: Datong Institute of Archaeology, Shanxi Province

Person in charge of excavation: Liu Junxi's cemetery is located in the highland 1 km east of Yu He River and Shaling Village in Datong City, Shanxi Province, and more than 200 cultural relics were unearthed from the tombs of the Northern Wei Dynasty 12. Among them, a brick tomb with well-preserved murals and dates is unique among many tombs in Pingcheng period of Northern Wei Dynasty, numbered M7, located in the north of the tombs. It is a brick tomb with a long slope, which consists of a tomb, a tunnel and a tomb. According to the written speculation, the owner of the tomb died in the first year of Taiyan (435), a Xianbei native, and was the mother of General Pingxi, the guest of honor of Shangshu.

Tomb murals are distributed on the four walls of the tomb and the top side of the tunnel, with a total area of about 24 square meters, distributed on the four walls of the tomb and the top side of the tunnel. On the upper column of the northern wall of the mural, there are six kinds of rare birds and animals symbolizing the stars in the sky. There are 19 women in the first row of the lower column. Their heads are tied in a high bun, their bodies are tied with streamers, and their chests are tied with sleeves. Under the isolation of thin red lines, the whole picture is a grand travel map of horses and chariots. From the middle of the east wall, there are 8 female figures consistent with the north wall to the north, and there are 10 male figures consistent with the south wall to the south. There is a tall building in the middle, where two men and women sit, as well as vehicles, horses and figures. The surrounding buildings show the social reality of the tomb owner's time-the Taiyan period of the Northern Wei Dynasty. From the image and style, it is closer to the Han and Wei Dynasties. The tomb not only fills the vacancy that the archaeological murals in Han and Tang Dynasties have no stereotyped materials in the Northern Wei Dynasty, but also has high academic and artistic value, providing valuable image materials for studying Chinese national customs, funeral customs, costumes and instruments.

Mo Wen unearthed in the tomb has a long length and rich connotations. It uses the age of stars and dates, and is the earliest written material found in Pingcheng, the capital of the Northern Wei Dynasty. Pingcheng, the capital of the Northern Wei Dynasty, has been the political, economic and cultural center of northern China for nearly a hundred years. However, few tomb murals were preserved in this period, and such exquisite excavation added important physical materials for the study of art archaeology in the Northern Dynasties.