The Terracota Army
In March 1974, a group of farmers digging a well near the city of Xi’an, in China’s Shaanxi province, struck something unexpected: fragments of painted clay. They had stumbled upon one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of modern times. Buried beneath the fields for more than two thousand years lay an enormous underground army – thousands of life-sized clay soldiers standing guard around the tomb complex of China’s first emperor. News of the find spread quickly, and archaeologists soon began the painstaking task of uncovering what had lain hidden since the emperor’s death in 210 BCE.
Archaeologists estimate that the site contains about 8,000 terracotta warriors, spread across roughly six hundred pits covering an area of more than twenty square miles. So far, archaeologists have excavated around 2,000 of them. At first glance, each soldier appears to be a distinct individual, with a unique face, hairstyle and expression. Yet the warriors were not sculpted one by one. Craftsmen assembled each figure from a limited set of standardised moulds – separate pieces for heads, torsos, arms and legs – before adding individual details by hand, such as topknots, armour and facial hair. This combination of mass production and hand-finishing allowed thousands of figures to be produced relatively quickly while still appearing distinct.
The army was built to guard the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, who unified China’s warring states in 221 BCE to become its first emperor. Remarkably, construction of his mausoleum had begun decades earlier, in 246 BCE, when he inherited the throne of the state of Qin at just thirteen years old. Historical records state that around 700,000 labourers worked on the project over some 38 years. The terracotta army was only one part of this vast undertaking: excavated pits have also revealed bronze chariots, terracotta officials, musicians and acrobats, and even models of bronze waterbirds, suggesting the emperor intended to recreate an entire miniature world to accompany him into the afterlife.
When the warriors were first excavated, many still carried traces of their original paintwork; the figures had once been brightly coloured in reds, greens, blues and purples over a lacquer base coat. However, archaeologists in the 1970s and 1980s made a costly discovery of their own: exposed to the dry air of the pits, the ancient lacquer would shrink and separate from the clay within minutes, causing the paint to flake away almost as soon as it was uncovered. Because of this, most surviving figures now appear a uniform terracotta-brown. Conservators have since developed methods to stabilise colour on-site immediately after excavation, using waxy compounds and carefully controlled humidity. These hard-won lessons now shape how, and how quickly, excavation of the wider site continues.
Despite the scale of the discovery, the emperor’s actual burial chamber, hidden beneath a large earthen mound nearby, has never been opened. Archaeologists have deliberately left it sealed, partly out of respect and partly because no reliable technique yet exists to preserve whatever lies inside once it meets open air. Instead, scientists have studied the mound indirectly, using ground-penetrating instruments and soil sampling rather than digging. Average mercury readings in the soil above the chamber measured around 200 parts per billion, but one sample peaked at over 1,400 parts per billion – far higher than would occur naturally. This finding closely matches an ancient description, written about a century after the emperor’s death, of a tomb containing rivers and seas of mercury built to represent the waterways of his empire. Indirect evidence, gathered without ever breaking the seal, therefore appears to support a two-thousand-year-old written account.
Not long after the emperor’s death, the dynasty collapsed amid rebellion, and the terracotta army suffered further damage. Marauding forces are thought to have broken into several pits, stealing the warriors’ genuine bronze weapons and setting fire to the wooden roof beams supporting the underground chambers. The resulting collapse crushed many figures into fragments. Consequently, much of the work now carried out at the site involves painstaking reconstruction: archaeologists piece together broken shards, much like an enormous three-dimensional puzzle, to restore individual soldiers to their original poses.
The Terracotta Army was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1987, and the site is now one of the most visited archaeological attractions in the world. Yet the vast majority of the wider necropolis remains unexplored, and researchers continue to uncover new pits. Each new excavation raises fresh questions: how many more figures remain hidden, what further treasures might the surrounding complex contain, and what would be revealed if the emperor’s sealed tomb were ever safely opened? For now, much of Qin Shi Huang’s underground empire remains, quite literally, buried in mystery.
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