It is generally held that a small number of great or aristocratic clans,flourishing from the third to the ninth century,disappeared from the received historical record around the tenth century.Despite meticulous studies by several generations of scholars,the transformation of social order remains one of the most contested areas of Chinese history.This book revisits the fall of such clans.Based on extensive historical data,including an exhaustive survey of epitaphs from the ninth century,it proposes a series of interpretative frameworks that provide a fresh take on various social and political changes.