Abstract: Three full-scaled Dou-Gong bracket sets on columns were designed to study the impact of dowel on their seismic behaviors. The capblock and flat beam were connected by conventional square wood dowel, circular wood dowel and circular lead dowel, respectively. The pseudo-static tests were conducted on the three Dou-Gongs to investigate the failure mode, hysteretic and skeleton curves, stiffness degradation, energy dissipation and deformation capacity. The results reveal that the square wood dowel is squeezed along the transverse and diagonal grain and torn along the parallel grain under the horizontal load, while the circular wood and lead dowel are squeezed and sheared. Friction sliding of the capblock and flat beam results in an obvious extrusion deformation of the mortise. Compared with the square wood dowel Dou-Gong, the positive and negative bearing capacities of circular wood dowel Dou-Gong are increased by 26.12% and 4.80% respectively, showing good energy dissipation ability, good initial stiffness and poor deformation ability. The circular lead dowel Dou-Gong has excellent energy dissipation ability at larger displacement, but the bearing capacity, stiffness and deformation ability are ordinary, and the capblock is split-damaged. Numerical models of all three Dou-Gongs were established, and the influences of the wood dowel diameter, axial load, physical and mechanical properties of the wood on the seismic behavior of Dou-Gong were studied based on the validated model. The results show that the larger the dowel diameter, wood friction coefficient and axial load, the greater the yield load and peak load of the Dou-Gong. As the compressive strength along the radial direction increases, the peak load of the Dou-Gong increases, but the yield load changes slightly.