Here's an interesting story from an in-press article in the Journal of Archaeological Science, about how Chinese archaeologists are using the pollen content in the clay to identify where Qin dynasty emperor Shi HuangDi's terracotta soldiers and other statuary were built.
Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Science, led by Ya-Qin Hu of the Department of Botany, and Zhong-Li Zhang at the Museum of the Terracotta Soldiers, looked at clay fragments of warriors and horses from Pit 2 at Emperor Qin's famous tomb. In some of the fragments, but not all, pollen and spores were identified; researchers believe the presence or absence is a result of differential firing temperatures. For complete firing, the statues would have required kiln temperatures of between 1000-1100 degrees Celsius; at that temperature, pollen is destroyed. But it had been noticed that some statues were only partially fired, reaching temperatures below 800 degrees Celsius. That supports the long-held notion that the process took the use of numerous kilns and potters.
CAS researchers also compared the pollen recovered from the partly fired statues to that of soil in the tomb itself, and discovered that the pollen in the horse sculptures matched that of the tomb vicinity--primarily arboreal taxa, including Pinus (Pine), Mallotus (spurge), and Moraceae (mulberry). But pollen from the warrior statues were predominantly herbaceous taxa, Brassicaceae (mustard or cabbage), Artemisia (wormwood or sagebrush), and Chenopodiacaea (goosefoot). Hu et al. postulate that the horses with their thin legs are more prone to breakage over long-distance hauling, and so were built in kilns closer to the tomb.
Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Science, led by Ya-Qin Hu of the Department of Botany, and Zhong-Li Zhang at the Museum of the Terracotta Soldiers, looked at clay fragments of warriors and horses from Pit 2 at Emperor Qin's famous tomb. In some of the fragments, but not all, pollen and spores were identified; researchers believe the presence or absence is a result of differential firing temperatures. For complete firing, the statues would have required kiln temperatures of between 1000-1100 degrees Celsius; at that temperature, pollen is destroyed. But it had been noticed that some statues were only partially fired, reaching temperatures below 800 degrees Celsius. That supports the long-held notion that the process took the use of numerous kilns and potters.
CAS researchers also compared the pollen recovered from the partly fired statues to that of soil in the tomb itself, and discovered that the pollen in the horse sculptures matched that of the tomb vicinity--primarily arboreal taxa, including Pinus (Pine), Mallotus (spurge), and Moraceae (mulberry). But pollen from the warrior statues were predominantly herbaceous taxa, Brassicaceae (mustard or cabbage), Artemisia (wormwood or sagebrush), and Chenopodiacaea (goosefoot). Hu et al. postulate that the horses with their thin legs are more prone to breakage over long-distance hauling, and so were built in kilns closer to the tomb.
- Pollens reveal origins of terracotta army, in Chemistry World
- Ya-Qin Hu, Zhong-Li Zhang, Subir Bera, David K. Ferguson, Cheng-Sen Li, Wen-Bin Shao, and Yu-Fei Wang. [in press, online in 2006]. What can pollen grains from the Terracotta Army tell us? to be published in Journal of Archaeological Science sometime later this year.
- Walking Tour of the Terracotta Soldiers
- The Terracotta Army of Shi HuangDi
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