Science News About 7,000 terracotta statues of soldiers and horses equipped with bronze weapons are buried in the tomb of Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi. For the first time, archaeologists were able to unravel several secrets of the creation of this afterlife army.
Assembling and installing many soldiers was a gigantic task for the ancient builders. They cast the clay bodies piece by piece and then assembled them on site, giving each soldier a personal touch. The finished statues were covered with colored paints and probably burned in kilns. As a result, 11 parallel corridors appeared in the tomb, where the statues stood in rows, as if preparing for battle.
However, no workshops or industrial debris was found in the area. As a result, the number, size and structure of the workshops that participated in the creation of the emperor's army still cannot be determined.
Archaeologist Patrick Quinn of University College London and three colleagues from China studied the composition of clay samples taken from 12 terracotta warriors. Experts concluded that the clay for the figures was mined in the same place near the tomb, but the work of many separate workshops was required to create thousands of statues.
Quinn's team did not miss the statues of acrobats discovered in the 2000s, clay bricks from the foundations of the main tomb, and bronze figurines of three birds.
Scientists note that the methods of making soldiers, their equipment and surrounding objects have changed. For example, the paving stones contained a mixture of dark and light clays, and sand was added to make the statues themselves. Fragments of plants were found inside the figurines of birds.
Researchers speculate that the clay was mined at the construction site and then transported to several different workshops. It is also possible that the sand made the clay mixture stronger, and the plant fragments made it possible to “lighten” the material, reports
Moreover, the analysis showed that the statues were fired at temperatures not exceeding 750 ° C. Today clays of this type require around 900–1000 ° C. It was previously thought that the firing temperature of the Terracotta Army was higher. Archaeologists suggested that such conclusions were led by the reheating of the figures during the fire, in which the roofs that covered the pits with the statues burned down.
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Elena Yakovleva