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February 18, 2003
Terra-Cotta Army From Early Han Dynasty Is Unearthed
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
The Chinese have raised another army of remarkable dimensions, hundreds of terra-cotta warriors, along with horses and chariots, that come from the depths of a tomb site south of Beijing.
The discovery was made late last year in the province of Shandong, near Weishan Mountain, and the first pictures have just been made available in the United States.
Archaeologists and conservators are working overtime to preserve the colorful painted decorations of the 2,000-year-old figurines as they are being exposed to air and removed from the ground.
This is not the first or the biggest such find. The most famous one, excavated in the 1970's at a imperial tomb outside the city of Xian, included 7,000 terra-cotta figures of soldiers, all of them life-size. A second company of clay soldiers, including farm animals, was found in 1990 in the vicinity of Xian.
But archaeologists and art scholars say the new discovery suggests that the Chinese in the Qin and Han dynasties probably made a regular practice of burying their royal and noble dead with a symbolic military escort into the afterlife.
The Weishan site, as archaeologists are calling it, may spread over as much as 10,000 square feet, Archaeology magazine reported in its current issue. If so, excavators predicted, the site may hold several thousand of the figurines, an impressive funerary display indicating that this was the burial place of a nobleman or close relative of a ruler of the Han dynasty, one of China's longest and most powerful, extending from 206 B.C. to A.D. 220.
Experts said the tomb appeared to date from the first half of the Han rule.
Similar burial customs have not been found associated with the latter Han period.
The impressive life-size figures at Xian came from the tomb of a powerful Qin emperor in the third century B.C., and the second find has been linked to the tomb of a Han emperor and empress from the second century B.C.
Although excavators have found a coffin with a body in the Weishan tomb, the magazine said, they doubt that these are the remains of the tomb complex's owner.
"Exactly who gets these underground armies at their tombs is not clear," Dr. David A. Sensabaugh, curator of Asian art at the Yale University Art Gallery, said in an interview last week.
"This tomb has to be for someone of a very high level, probably a prince, a son of the emperor, who ruled in that region."
The first experts to examine the site were impressed by the organization of the military figurines. At the forefront were cavalrymen followed by highly decorated chariots and their red horses, then the ranks of infantry.
Alongside them were several musicians, one with a brightly painted drum next to him.
Some experts interpreted this as the first archaeological evidence for a typical Han battle formation. Others said they believed the figures were not combat soldiers, but a kind of honor guard.
Dr. Sensabaugh said the order of the troops appeared to be similar to those shown in Han paintings and described in documents for "touring formations." These were the occasions, he said, when a prince went out with his chariots and soldiers in a display of pomp and a show of power, not a march to war.
The magazine report noted that Han funeral practice "was strict and specified that only generals could be buried with combat warriors and horses." So the nature of the terra-cotta army and its significance in ancient Chinese burial practices, the magazine concluded, "will not be resolved until the owner of the tomb complex is identified."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy
OZYMANDIAS
P.B.Shelley, 1792-1822
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said -- "two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert ... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Terra-Cotta Army From Early Han Dynasty Is Unearthed
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
The Chinese have raised another army of remarkable dimensions, hundreds of terra-cotta warriors, along with horses and chariots, that come from the depths of a tomb site south of Beijing.
The discovery was made late last year in the province of Shandong, near Weishan Mountain, and the first pictures have just been made available in the United States.
Archaeologists and conservators are working overtime to preserve the colorful painted decorations of the 2,000-year-old figurines as they are being exposed to air and removed from the ground.
This is not the first or the biggest such find. The most famous one, excavated in the 1970's at a imperial tomb outside the city of Xian, included 7,000 terra-cotta figures of soldiers, all of them life-size. A second company of clay soldiers, including farm animals, was found in 1990 in the vicinity of Xian.
But archaeologists and art scholars say the new discovery suggests that the Chinese in the Qin and Han dynasties probably made a regular practice of burying their royal and noble dead with a symbolic military escort into the afterlife.
The Weishan site, as archaeologists are calling it, may spread over as much as 10,000 square feet, Archaeology magazine reported in its current issue. If so, excavators predicted, the site may hold several thousand of the figurines, an impressive funerary display indicating that this was the burial place of a nobleman or close relative of a ruler of the Han dynasty, one of China's longest and most powerful, extending from 206 B.C. to A.D. 220.
Experts said the tomb appeared to date from the first half of the Han rule.
Similar burial customs have not been found associated with the latter Han period.
The impressive life-size figures at Xian came from the tomb of a powerful Qin emperor in the third century B.C., and the second find has been linked to the tomb of a Han emperor and empress from the second century B.C.
Although excavators have found a coffin with a body in the Weishan tomb, the magazine said, they doubt that these are the remains of the tomb complex's owner.
"Exactly who gets these underground armies at their tombs is not clear," Dr. David A. Sensabaugh, curator of Asian art at the Yale University Art Gallery, said in an interview last week.
"This tomb has to be for someone of a very high level, probably a prince, a son of the emperor, who ruled in that region."
The first experts to examine the site were impressed by the organization of the military figurines. At the forefront were cavalrymen followed by highly decorated chariots and their red horses, then the ranks of infantry.
Alongside them were several musicians, one with a brightly painted drum next to him.
Some experts interpreted this as the first archaeological evidence for a typical Han battle formation. Others said they believed the figures were not combat soldiers, but a kind of honor guard.
Dr. Sensabaugh said the order of the troops appeared to be similar to those shown in Han paintings and described in documents for "touring formations." These were the occasions, he said, when a prince went out with his chariots and soldiers in a display of pomp and a show of power, not a march to war.
The magazine report noted that Han funeral practice "was strict and specified that only generals could be buried with combat warriors and horses." So the nature of the terra-cotta army and its significance in ancient Chinese burial practices, the magazine concluded, "will not be resolved until the owner of the tomb complex is identified."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy
OZYMANDIAS
P.B.Shelley, 1792-1822
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said -- "two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert ... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."