Fingerprints reveal women and children built China’s Terracotta army
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Researchers in China examined fingerprints on terracotta warriors and determined that women and children contributed to their creation.
A team from Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum and Shandong University analysed 79 fingerprints found on 36 warriors from Pit 1, part of the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor. They published their findings in the Journal of Cultural Heritage on October 13.
The analysis showed that adult men left approximately 45% of the fingerprints, while adult women accounted for 32.7% and children under 15 made up the remaining 22.3%. The team used a Bayesian mixture model to evaluate the prints, measuring the space between fingerprint ridges to estimate age and sex, a method that overcame previous difficulties in distinguishing between adult women and teenage boys.
Archaeologists previously believed that the army was constructed solely by adult men, lacking direct evidence of the workforce. The researchers suggest that children may have performed simpler tasks, like attaching decorations, referencing a formal apprenticeship system documented in Qin Dynasty texts. They also note historical records of women working in state-run workshops.
The study cautions that the percentages represent the frequency of prints found, not necessarily the number of individuals involved, and that the findings may only reflect the labor structure of a specific production group within the larger project. The terracotta army dates to around 210 B.C. and was discovered in 1974.
