The ruins of burial chambers cut into hillside slopes or bedrock have been
found around the world. Notable examples include the rock-cut tombs
in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings in the New Kingdom period, the underground
Etruscan tombs in Italy dating back to the 8th to 1st century BC,
underground rock-cut tombs across Central Asia, and the large cliff tombs
constructed for Han dynasty nobility in China.
Small burial chambers bored into hillside slopes, called rock-cut tombs,
have also been found in the Japanese archipelago. Dating back to the end
of and after the Kofun period, the rock-cut tombs in Japan share the same
clustered quality as other tombs of this period.
There was a hierarchical quality to the different types of tombs constructed
during this era, which included large burial mounds, smaller burial
mounds, and, the most common, rock-cut tombs with no accompanying
burial mound. Burial mounds comprised stone rooms that served as the
direct burial chamber for the remains and coffins made of boards. The
configuration of rock-cut tombs was similar to that of the stone rooms in
burial mounds.
Large numbers of newer small graves may indicate clusters of tombs
in which the group responsible for the local development of the area was
buried. In addition, a large number of iron weapons are found among
the goods buried in the rock-cut tombs in Japan, which indicates that the
period in which they were built was one of tension.book par
