China’s Terracotta Army stands as one of the clearest surviving symbols of imperial power in the ancient world.
Now, new research is offering intriguing insight into the people who created the enormous funerary monument.
Scientists examined fingerprints preserved in the clay, left behind by artisans more than 2,200 years ago while the figures were still being shaped.
The findings indicate that women—and possibly children—played a far greater role in producing the life-size army than previously believed.
The study, published in the Journal of Cultural Heritage, found that adult men accounted for just 45 per cent of the surviving fingerprints.
Adult women were responsible for almost 33 per cent, while children younger than 15 contributed 22 per cent of the prints identified by researchers.
Scientists analysed fingerprints embedded in Terracotta Army warriors more than 2,000 years ago, shedding light on the people who built the remarkable monument
Construction of the Terracotta Army began in the early third century BC as part of the immense burial complex created for Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor.
The monument reflected the belief that the emperor would require soldiers in the afterlife to protect him and fight on his behalf.
Soon after taking the throne at only 13 years old, Qin Shihuang ordered the creation of the vast force that would accompany him into the next world.
The figures were arranged in three enormous pits and include more than 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots, 520 horses and 150 cavalrymen.
Although the warriors now appear reddish brown, they were originally covered in vivid colours created from pigments produced by grinding precious stones.
The colossal project is thought to have continued for roughly four decades, demanding an equally vast workforce of sculptors, painters and kiln operators.
Archaeologists suspect that workshop complexes resembling ancient factories produced components such as heads and arms in large quantities before sending them elsewhere for assembly.
Earlier studies have identified a distinction between figures made by “royal” potters, who stamped their work with a distinctive symbol, and those created by local artisans.
Researchers measured the spacing between fingerprint ridges, a feature that changes with age and differs between men and women
The three pits hold more than 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots, 520 horses and 150 cavalrymen; creating the army took more than a decade
Despite the monument’s scale, however, archaeologists have had little information about the individuals who produced it.
For years, the prevailing view was that major building projects in ancient China depended almost entirely on adult men. The latest evidence is helping challenge that long-held assumption.
The researchers studied 79 fingerprints found on the arms, heads and body armour of 36 Terracotta Army warriors.
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They then measured the distance between the fingerprint ridges, which increase in distance as children grow and are different in women and men.
Previous attempts to use this method have struggled to tell the difference between adult women and children, due to the similar gaps between their fingerprint ridges.
However, the researchers were able to use a modern statistical analysis method called a Bayesian mixture model to help detect the differences.
Instead of classifying every single mark individually, this method analyses the entire group of prints as a set and compares it with modern fingerprint databases for different ages and sexes.
The researchers write: ‘The model results indicate that the artisan community was not exclusively composed of adult males.
‘This biological evidence highly corroborates numerous historical records, vividly reconstructing the production scene in the Qin Dynasty’s state-run workshops where men and women served together, and adult artisans worked alongside juveniles, who may have been helpers or beginners.’
However, the researchers admit that the study does have some limitations.
Most significantly, this is a small sample size from a single spot within a staggeringly vast funeral complex.
The full mausoleum is a vast area surrounded by a 3.9-mile-long (6.3km) wall, modelled after the layout of the dynasty’s capital city complete with towers, stables, and even simulated rivers made out of liquid mercury.
This collection of prints, therefore, might only represent a single workshop or brief phase of the construction project, rather than representing an overall trend.
The researchers write: ‘Future work should extend fingerprint sampling to other pits and workshops to evaluate spatial and temporal variations in workforce structure.’
China’s Terracotta Warriors: The 8,000-strong army of statues built to protect the First Qin Emperor
Each of these 2,000-year-old figures was given personality and was coloured
The Terracotta Army is a form of funerary art buried with the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, in 210 to 209 BC and whose purpose was to protect the emperor in his afterlife.
One of the most famous archaeological sites in the world, it was discovered by chance by villagers in 1974, and excavation has been on-going at the site since that date.
An extraordinary feat of mass-production, each figure was given an individual personality although they were not intended to be portraits.
The figures vary in height according to their roles, with the tallest being the generals.
Current estimates are that there were more than 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses, the majority of which are still buried.
Since 1998, figures of terracotta acrobats, bureaucrats, musicians and bronze birds have also been discovered at the site.
They were designed to entertain the Emperor in his afterlife and they are of crucial importance to our understanding of his attempts to control the world even in death.
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