Description:
New excavations in a small cemetery (Xiabali, Xuanhe, Hebei prov.) of the end of the Liao dynasty are presented here. A particular attention is payed to tomb n° 3 (end of the 12th century) : a house-like burial with some very fine but intriguing wall-paintings. An important feature is that this Buddhist cemetery is located in a geographical area where Chinese and non-Chinese societies traditionaly met, and this graveyard is a fascinating example of culturaly mixed archaeological remains. The place is relatively well preserved, well dated (1093- 1117) and original : ashes of incinerated corpses were kept in wooden figurines. The most difficult question is raised by the interpretation of wall-paintings. Although this question cannot be answered before a large scale program of Liao painting study be completed, the urgency of such a research is stressed through this new and challenging discovery. The difficulties of pictures interpretation are subsequently underlined and a new approach is suggested, which is based on an entropy-like notion, in order to interpret pictorial transformation in a changing society.