Soldiers stand in formation in Pit 1.

One of the greatest archaeological discoveries of this century occurred in March 1974, near the city of Xi'an in the north-central province of Shaanxi. Farmers digging for water unearthed a fragment of a warrior figure, part of the terracotta army of Qin Shi Huangdi, who ruled between 246 and 210 B.C. Construction of his elaborate tomb probably began as soon as he assumed the throne. More than a tomb, it is an entire necropolis, a city of the dead. The later Han historian Sima Qian (c. 145-86 B.C.) described Qin Shi Huangdi's tomb as a microcosm replicating the heavens and the earth.

Almost one hundred pits containing the skeletons of horses and terracotta grooms constituted the emperor's stables. Even hay was provided. Other pits held clay models of birds and plants and must have represented his parks. Some twenty tombs probably hold the remains of his councilors and retainers. At the center of the necropolis is a mound that marks the emperor's own grave; it has not yet been excavated.

Conservators work on still half-buried figures

The emperor's terracotta army was found in three underground wooden vaults. Pit 1 contained chariots and six thousand soldiers in ranks. Pit 2 held fourteen hundred figures of cavalrymen, infantry, and horses, along with ninety wooden chariots. Pit 3 contained about seventy figures. A fourth, shallower pit was empty. Perhaps this last pit was meant to be the ground of battle.

The three pits were looted and all the figures broken, apparently by the conquering troops of the Han, soon after completion. Excavating them has been a massive undertaking. To date, more than a thousand warriors have been reassembled.

Tomb figures and models of other goods are termed mingqi (spirit articles) and are usually seen as surrogates for the real people and animals who were sacrificed in earlier burials and the costly vessels that were buried with them. The mingqi recreate and maintain the deceased's earthly reality. In the Bronze Age, the capability of the elite to sacrifice precious material like bronze (which could otherwise be put to practical use in weapons or tools), as well as the lives of their retainers and servants, was a demonstration of power and status. In the emperor's necropolis, it is the ability to marshal the resources required to produce these likenesses -- proof of economic, organizational, and technical power -- that has become the mark of his prestige.