| Abstract |
Ming tombs are particularly rare in Penghu and Taiwan. The island of Xiyu potentially contains one such tomb belonging to a woman with the surname Hong (洪). This tomb, if reliably dated, might give ethnographers and historians a special insight into the cultural practices of Penghu, and perhaps Taiwan, in the 17th century through its material, carving, orientation, stylistic choices, measurements, and architecture. Details surrounding this tomb are scarce, however, as contemporary Ming tombs have eroded or been removed, this research seeks to situate the Hong tombstone into Zheng Era through a comparison with other temporally related tombstones in Penghu and Taiwan. Measurements of the Hong tombstone have been taken from site visits including its orientation, size, shape, material, character variants and placement. In our attempts to compare these data to previous digital and non-digital tombstone studies, we become aware of the many knowledge gaps that exist within earlier studies, which force us to re-document as many of these earlier findings as possible. The regularities and systematic shifts discovered in this digital documentation lend themselves to the establishment of new methods for tombstone research while digitally preserving a piece of Taiwanese history. We conclude on the basis of our comparison that the Hong tomb is very likely to be a construction of the late Zheng Era, and its well-preserved state is due to its location, orientation, and burial within the coastal sand dunes. |
