Terracotta Army fingerprints show women and children in Qin workforce

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Key facts

• The research examined 36 statues recovered from Pit 1, the largest pit of the Qin terracotta army, the 2,200-year-old funerary complex of China's first emperor at Xi'an.
• 91 fingerprints were identified on the statues, of which 79 were preserved well enough for analysis.
• 73 were surface prints pressed directly into wet clay during modelling and trimming; the other 6 came from craftspeople gripping small pre-shaped clay pieces such as armour studs and belts.
• Age and sex were estimated by measuring ridge distance and density and feeding the values into a Bayesian mixture model.
• Results estimated the fingerprint assemblage was 45% adult males, 32% adult females and 22% children under 15, challenging the assumption that the workforce was adult male.
• The researchers interpret the children as apprentices, a practice described in Qin court records.
• Qin lacquerware of the period bears inscriptions naming adult women, young girls and young boys who participated in lacquer production.
• Earlier analysis of inscriptions on the warriors divided their makers into royal and local potters.

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