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Crossbows and imperial craft organisation: the bronze triggers of China's Terracotta Army

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Xiuzhen Janice Li ,
Andrew Bevan ,
Marcos Martinón-Torres ,
Thilo Rehren ,
Wei Cao ,
Yin Xia  and
Kun Zhao
Xiuzhen Janice Li
Affiliation:
Emperor Qin Shihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum, Lintong, Xi'an, 710600, China UCL Institute of Archaeology, 31–34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, UK
Andrew Bevan
Affiliation:
UCL Institute of Archaeology, 31–34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, UK
Marcos Martinón-Torres
Affiliation:
UCL Institute of Archaeology, 31–34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, UK
Thilo Rehren
Affiliation:
UCL Institute of Archaeology, 31–34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, UK UCL Qatar, a partner of Hamad bin Khalifa University, PO Box 25256, Doha, Qatar
Wei Cao
Affiliation:
Emperor Qin Shihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum, Lintong, Xi'an, 710600, China
Yin Xia
Affiliation:
Emperor Qin Shihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum, Lintong, Xi'an, 710600, China
Kun Zhao
Affiliation:
Emperor Qin Shihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum, Lintong, Xi'an, 710600, China
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Abstract

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The Terracotta Army that protected the tomb of the Chinese emperor Qin Shihuang offers an evocative image of the power and organisation of the Qin armies who unified China through conquest in the third century BC. It also provides evidence for the craft production and administrative control that underpinned the Qin state. Bronze trigger mechanisms are all that remain of crossbows that once equipped certain kinds of warrior in the Terracotta Army. A metrical and spatial analysis of these triggers reveals that they were produced in batches and that these separate batches were thereafter possibly stored in an arsenal, but eventually were transported to the mausoleum to equip groups of terracotta crossbowmen in individual sectors of Pit 1. The trigger evidence for large-scale and highly organised production parallels that also documented for the manufacture of the bronze-tipped arrows and proposed for the terracotta figures themselves.

Keywords

ChinaXi'anthird century BCQin periodTerracotta Armystandardisationlogisticstechnologyspatial analysis
Type
Research articles
Information
Antiquity , Volume 88 , Issue 339 , March 2014 , pp. 126 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2014

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