Chemical analyses and copy-errors: technological control and artistic behaviour in the making of China’s Terracotta Army

Summary

Built in the 3rd century BC, the Terracotta Army constitutes an unprecedented investment of technological resources as well as a huge work of art. An icon of a much larger mausoleum, the army of thousands of heavily armed warriors materialised in just a few decades under the command of the man who would become China’s first emperor. This paper presents some aspects of an ongoing project that investigates this logistical feat, paying particular attention to craft organisation, quality control and artisanal practice. Using metric, microscopic and chemical analyses of the weapons, together with geometric morphometric comparisons of digital 3D models of the warriors, we identify different patterns of artefact variability at micro and macro scales of analyses. These patterns are explained as resulting from various factors at play, including the organisation of the labour force, structures for knowledge transmission and quality control, the use of standards and moulds, copy-errors and the intrinsic limitations of workers and materials. Using similar methods we attempt to explain both the materials engineering and the aesthetic or artistic constraints at play. We outline the problems and potentials of applying our methods elsewhere for comparative studies.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Micro-worlds, materiality and human behaviour: Magnifying material science in explanations of technology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage