79 fingerprints analyzed on 36 Chinese terracotta army statues suggest that women and minors may also have participated in their production. However, the study has insurmountable methodological limitations and does not allow the composition of the workforce to be reconstructed with certainty.
THE’terracotta army of the first Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang, built between 246 and 206 BC, it may have been built by a workforce more diversified than what has been hypothesized so far, both in terms of gender and age. A new study published in Journal of Cultural Heritagewith leader Xiaoxi Li of the Mausoleum Museum of Emperor Qin Shi Huang in Xi’An, analyzed 79 fingerprints preserved on the clay of the statues, identifying clues of the possible participation of women and children in the realization of the great funeral project.
This was started in 3rd century BC and it was a project greatso much so that the emperor’s burial chamber has not yet been identified. Only secondary mausoleum complexes (such as that of the Terracotta Army) have been excavated by archaeologists. Qin Shi Huang’s burial area is UNESCO heritage since 1987.
The Chinese study focused on 79 well-preserved footprintslocated on 36 statues in excavation unit T23 of Pit 1. The complex in which the terracotta army was found is in fact divided into eight pits. The sample therefore comes from a limited sector of the complex and represents only a part of the approximately 8,000 life-size figures that make up the army, also represented with weapons and armour.
For estimate age and gender of who left the footprints, scholars have employed a statistical model Bayesian based average width of the papillary ridges of the fingertips. There morphology of the footprints in fact varies in relation to age and sex, but the overlaps between different groups make the based classifications unreliable on a single track.
The model instead allows you to analyze the set of measurements and to quantify the uncertainty of the estimates, correcting the results with an acceptable degree of approximation. These indicate a composite estimated distribution for the 45% from adult menfor the 32.7% from adult women and for the 22.3% from individuals under 15 years old. This registry threshold arbitrary was chosen on the basis of legal texts from the period of the Qin dynasty (221-206 BC), in which age had an important role in defining the legal responsibilitya bit like the 14 years in the Italian legal system.
From a methodological point of view, Xiaoxi Li’s study presents some problems. The percentages they don’t match necessarily to actual composition of the manpower used to create the statues. In fact, these simply measure the frequency of the prints classified by the model: the same person could have left them differentwhile other workers might not leaving any at all.
Furthermore, i reference data used by Chinese scholars to interpret the footprints come from modern European populations. The biological differences of these compared to the inhabitants of ancient China may have led to overestimate or underestimate the presence of women and minors.
Despite the methodological problems of the study, the hypothesis of female and minor participation is not entirely new. Someone registrations on Qin era objects actually mention the presence of adult women, girls and boys engaged in artisanal production under the control of the state. However, it was not clear whether this organization of work, relating to other spheres of productionalso concerned the manufacture of the terracotta army.
The footprints Not still allow you to reconstruct accurately who carried out the individual tasks, nor to extend the results to all the workshops involved. However, they offer a new perspective of study regarding theorganization of imperial production: Traces left unintentionally on the clay by someone more than 2,200 years ago can also contribute to restore visibility to the people who worked on one of the most impressive funerary complexes of antiquity.
