The Terracotta Army: A History

The ancient terracotta army, dating back from 210 B.C, was discovered in 1974 by local farmers near Xi’an. This discovery led many archeologists to swarm to the site to investigate. The Army was a form of funerary art, buried with Emperor Qin Shi Huang. Their purpose was to help Shi Huang Di rule another empire in the after-life. According to the historian Sima Qian construction of the Mausoleum consisted of about 700,000 workers. The construction was fashioned to serve as an imperial palace or compound. It contains several offices, hallways, and is surrounded by a wall with gateway entrances. The remains of some craftsmen were found inside the tomb, and it is believed they were sealed inside to prevent them from giving out information about the tomb.

The figures were manufactured in workshops by government laborers and also by craftsmen. To build one of these statues the craftsmen had to first create the arms, legs, torso, and head separate. Then the craftsmen would assemble the parts and add more clay to the head to make an individual face and expression. The process took on an assembly line like resemblance, with each part being made separate, fired, and put together. Each figure was an individual, and had varied in height, appearance, and position according to rank.

The terra-cotta army represented the ability of Qin Shi Huang Di to control the resources of the newly unified China. Shihuangdi’s necropolis was surely large enough to merit the name of city of death. The outer wall of the mausoleum precinct measured 2100 x 975 meters and enclosed administrative buildings, horse stables and cemeteries; the heart of the precinct was the 500×500 meter tomb for Shihuangdi. Found in the precinct were ceramic and bronze sculptures, including cranes, horses, chariots, stone carved armor for humans and horses, and human sculptures that archaeologists have interpreted as representing officials and acrobats. The three pits containing the now-famous terracotta army are located 600 meters east of the mausoleum precinct, in a farm field where they were re-discovered by a well digger in the 1920s.

This discovery led to new dimensions of knowledge to the art of ancient Chinese pottery makers. Tomb figures and objects with molded and painted decoration continued to be made in the Han dynasty (206 b.c.-A.D220). This included houses, human figures, and even stoves. Some bricks from the time were decorated with scenes of everyday animal and human life. Gray stoneware with thick green glaze and some reddish earthenware were also produced. During the Six Dynasties period, celadon-glazed stoneware, a precursor of later porcelain celadon, began to appear. Celadons are transparent iron-pigmented glazes that when fired in a reducing kiln give a gray, pale blur or green, or brownish-olive color. Jars, ewers, and dishes became more delicate of line and classical in contour, some had simple incised or molded ornamentation.