How Emperor Qin's Terracotta Soldiers Were Made

The Chinese terracotta army.
The army of terracotta warriors discovered in 1974.

Krzysztof Dydynski/Getty Images

One of the great treasures of the world is the Terracotta Army of Qin Shi-Huangdi, in which an estimated 8,000 life-sized sculptures of soldiers were placed in rows as part of the Qin ruler's tomb. Constructed between 246 and 209 B.C., the mausoleum complex is much more than just the soldiers and has lent itself to many scientific discoveries.

The statues of the infantry soldiers range in size between 1.7 m (5 ft 8 in) and 1.9 m (6 ft 2 in). The commanders are all 2 m (6.5 ft) tall. The lower halves of the kiln-fired ceramic bodies were made of solid terracotta clay, the upper halves were hollow. The pieces were created in molds and then glued together with clay paste. They were fired in one piece. Neutron activation analysis indicates that the sculptures were made from multiple kilns scattered around the countryside, although no kilns have been found to date.

Building and Painting a Terracotta Soldier

Close up view of an individual terracotta warrior.
Some hints of three distinct colors are on the face and clothing of this terracotta warrior on display in the Shaanxi History Museum, Xian, China.

Tim Graham/Contributor/Getty Images

After firing, the sculptures were coated with two thin layers of the poisonous east Asian lacquer (qi in Chinese, urushi in Japanese). On top of the glossy, dark brown surface of the urushi, the sculptures were painted with bright colors laid down thickly. Thick paint was used to imitate bird feathers or ornaments on a silk border. The paint colors chosen involve blends with Chinese purple, cinnabar, and azurite. The binding medium was egg white tempera. The paint, plainly visible to the excavators when the soldiers were first exposed, has mostly flaked and eroded away.

Bronze Weaponry

Terracotta warriors holding spears.

TORLEY/Flickr/CC BY 2.0

The soldiers were armed with numerous, fully-functional bronze weapons. At least 40,000 arrowheads and several hundred other bronze weapons have been found to date, likely hafted in wood or bamboo shafts. The metal parts which survive include crossbow triggers, sword blades, lance tips, spearheads, hooks, honor weapons (called Su), dagger-ax blades, and halberds. The halberds and lances were inscribed with the regnal date of construction. The halberds were made between 244-240 B.C. and the lances between 232-228 B.C. Other metal objects often had the names of workers, their supervisors, and workshops. Grinding and polishing marks on the bronze weapons indicate that the weapons were ground using a small hard stone rotary wheel or brush.

The arrowheads are extremely standardized in shape. They were composed of a triangular pyramid-shaped point. A tang fitted the point into a bamboo or wooden shaft and a feather was attached at the distal end. The arrows were found bundled in groups of 100 units, probably representing a quiver's worth. The points are visually identical, although tangs are one of two lengths. Neutron activation analysis of the metal content shows they were made in batches by different cells of workers functioning in parallel. The process most likely reflects the way weapons were made for those used by flesh-and-blood armies.

The Lost Art of Shi Huangdi's Pottery Kilns

Terracotta soldiers and horses.

Yaohua2000/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 3.0

Building 8,000 life-sized pottery gentlemen, not to mention the animals and other terracotta sculptures found in the Qin's tomb, must have been a formidable task. Yet, no kilns have been found in association with the emperor's tomb. Several pieces of information suggest that the manufacturing took place by workmen in many locations. The names of workshops on some of the bronze objects, the different metal content of the arrow groups, different types of soils used for the pottery, and pollen shows evidence that work was carried out in several locations.

Pollen granules were found in low-fired sherds from Pit 2. Pollen from the horse statues matched that of the near vicinity of the site, including pinus (pine), Mallotus (spurge), and Moraceae (mulberry). Pollen from the warriors, however, were mostly herbaceous, including Brassicaceae (mustard or cabbage), Artemisia (wormwood or sagebrush), and Chenopodiaceae (goosefoot). Researchers postulate that horses with their thin legs were more prone to breakage while being hauled long distances, and so were built in kilns closer to the tomb.

Are They Portraits of Individuals?

Close up view of terracotta soldiers with different faces.

foursummers/Pixabay

The soldiers have an amazing amount of variations in headgear, hairdos, costumes, armor, belts, belt hooks, boots, and shoes. There is variation especially in facial hair and expression. Art historian Ladislav Kesner, quoting Chinese scholars, argues that despite the specific traits and seemingly endless diversity of the faces, the figures are better viewed not as individuals but as "types," with the goal being to produce the appearance of individuality. The physicality of the statues is frozen, and the postures and gestures are representations of the clay soldier's rank and role.

Kesner points out that the art challenges those in the Western world who conceptually see individuality and type as separate things: the Qin soldiers are both individual and particularized types. He translates the Chinese scholar Wu Hung, who said that the goal of reproducing portrait sculpture would be alien to Bronze Age ritual art, which "aimed to visualize an intermediate stage between the human world and beyond it." The Qin sculptures are a break with the Bronze Age styles, but echoes of the era are still seen in the cool, distant expressions on the soldiers' faces.

Sources

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Hu, Wenjing. "Analysis of polychromy binder on Qin Shihuang's Terracotta Warriors by immunofluorescence microscopy." Journal of Cultural Heritage, Kun Zhang, Hui Zhang, Bingjian Zhang, Bo Rong, Volume 16, Issue 2, ScienceDirect, March-April 2015.

Hu, Ya-Qin. "What can pollen grains from the Terracotta Army tell us?" Journal of Archaeological Science, Zhong-Li Zhang, Subir Bera, David K. Ferguson, Cheng-Sen Li, Wen-Bin Shao, Yu-Fei Wang, Volume 24, Issue 7, ScienceDirect, July 2007.

Kesner, Ladislav. "Likeness of No One: (Re)presenting the First Emperor's Army." The Art Bulletin, Vol. 77, No. 1, JSTOR, March 1995.

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Li, Xiuzhen Janice. "Crossbows and imperial craft organisation: the bronze triggers of China's Terracotta Army." Antiquity, Andrew Bevan, Marcos Martinón-Torres, Thilo Rehren, Volume 88, Issue 339, Cambridge University Press, January 2, 2015.

Li, Xiuzhen Janice. "Inscriptions, filing, grinding and polishing marks on the bronze weapons from the Qin Terracotta Army in China." Journal of Archaeological Science, Marcos Martinón-Torres, Nigel D. Meeks, Yin Xia, Kun Zhaoa, Volume 38, Issue 3, ScienceDirect, March 2011.

Martinón-Torres, Marcos. "Making Weapons for the Terracotta Army." Xiuzhen Janice Li, Andrew Bevan, Yin Xia, Zhao Kun, Thilo Rehren, Archaeology International.

"Replicas of Terracotta Warriors in Canada." China Daily, April 25, 2012

Wei, Shuya. "Scientific investigation of the paint and adhesive materials used in the Western Han dynasty polychromy terracotta army, Qingzhou, China." Journal of Archaeological Science, Qinglin Ma, Manfred Schreiner, Volume 39, Issue 5, ScienceDirect, May 2012.

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Hirst, K. Kris. "How Emperor Qin's Terracotta Soldiers Were Made." ThoughtCo, Apr. 5, 2023, thoughtco.com/emperor-qins-terracotta-soldiers-170870. Hirst, K. Kris. (2023, April 5). How Emperor Qin's Terracotta Soldiers Were Made. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/emperor-qins-terracotta-soldiers-170870 Hirst, K. Kris. "How Emperor Qin's Terracotta Soldiers Were Made." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/emperor-qins-terracotta-soldiers-170870 (accessed March 28, 2024).