Study Finds Adult Women, Minors Helped Make Terracotta Warriors

A new study has found that a portion of the Terracotta Warriors was largely made by adult women and minors, challenging the belief that the vast production effort relied only on adult men.

The findings are based on legal records and physical evidence, including evidence from batches of terracotta figures.

Evidence of a diverse workforce

“These findings challenge the long-held assumption that Terracotta Army production relied exclusively on adult male labour, providing the first quantitative biological evidence for a diverse workforce including women and children,” Shen Jingyi wrote in the paper.

The paper was published on October 13 in the peer-reviewed Journal of Cultural Heritage.

The study adds a new dimension to understanding how the army was produced during the Qin dynasty. Its findings indicate that pottery crafting was not assigned solely to adult men, but also included women and children.

Army built for the afterlife

The Terracotta Army lies about 5 metres underground near one of China’s oldest cities. It consists of a life-size army of thousands of terracotta warriors.

The site is located 35km northeast of historic Xian.

The army was created to protect China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, in the afterlife.

It was buried with him after his death in 210BC.

The new evidence matters because it directly disputes a long-held assumption about the labour force behind one of China’s most significant archaeological discoveries.

Source: South China Morning Post