Ceramic Manufacturing Technology and Organisation of Production at Emperor Qin Shihuang’s Mausoleum Complex, China

Summary

This is an abstract from the "New materials and new insights for our understanding of the First Emperor's Mausoleum and early imperial China" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Emperor Qin Shihuang’s Terracotta Army is an ancient ceramic assemblage of immense scale, importance and world renown. This impressive funerary assemblage, as well as the many thousands of other ceramic artefacts unearthed from the First Emperor’s mausoleum complex, have the potential to shed a light on the planning and execution of large‐scale building projects by the Qin Empire. We have recently demonstrated this by studying the ceramic paste of the of the terracotta statues and other ceramic objects in detail using scientific techniques, such as thin section petrography and instrumental geochemistry (Quinn et al. 2017, 2020). This presentation will bring together these recent findings with previous studies (e.g. Gao et al. 2003, Zhao et al. 2003; Lei et al. 2004) to summarise our understanding of the raw material sources, production sites and ceramic technology of the statues and associated clay-based artefacts at the Mausoleum. It demonstrates how scientific data can be used to study the organisation of ceramic production in Qin period China, including topics such as the division of labour, quality control, standardisation and logistics management.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• New materials and new insights for our understanding of the First Emperor's Mausoleum and early imperial China

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53202