Terracotta Warriors of China

"Once we excavated a figure with the colors intact," remembers the soft-spoken Liu. "When we took it outside, though, the paint layer started curling up and peeling off right before our eyes. Within ten minutes it was gone. As an archaeologist I felt horrible about it, but there was nothing I could do."

Knowing that some sections of the site might contain more undamaged figures, museum officials slowed the pace of excavation, partly to focus on researching chemical compounds that would stabilize the lacquer layer. In 1988 the Shaanxi Province Cultural Relics Bureau signed an agreement to work with the Bavarian State Conservation Office, based in Munich, Germany. Chemists and art preservationists from both countries tested more than 30 possible compounds before arriving at a solution known as PEG, sometimes used to prevent excavated wood artifacts from drying out too quickly. A version of the compound proved effective on terra-cotta. In 1999 the museum performed its first on-site test, choosing a far corner of Pit 2 that hadn't been damaged by vandals. Working at a painstaking pace with fine tools—"like dentists," says Liu—the team of archaeologists and chemists spent more than a year uncovering six figures.

Suddenly Qin Shi Huang Di's world appeared in Technicolor. The colors—reds and greens and blues and purples—vary from soldier to soldier, and experts have yet to find a connection between color and rank or function. There are unexpected touches like contrasting shirt cuffs. And then there's the strangest discovery of all: one figure whose face is painted green. He may have been intended to frighten the enemy, or possibly the touch was purely artistic.

"You might ask why there aren't other quirks in the soldiers—for example, why do they all pose the same way?" asks Liu, standing in the test excavation site. The pudgy, round-faced archaeologist looks vaguely out of place in the midst of the six fierce warriors, who are kneeling at attention, crossbows at their sides, prepared to rise and fire at the command that still hasn't sounded after 2,200 years. "They can't be disorganized, because they're soldiers," says Liu. "But the colors might have provided some individuality and artistic flair that the form could not. This suggests that when these figures were made, the question of whether they were beautiful or not was even more important than whether they were standard."

But like all the archaeologists I've spoken with, Liu is quick to emphasize that this is only a preliminary theory that must wait until further excavations are done. It's like working on a puzzle where adding new pieces makes the picture larger rather than more complete.

This sense of an expanding mystery is especially vivid at the two experimental pits. In addition to the performers, these digs have yielded a massive 467-pound (210-kilogram) bronze cauldron, the largest ever found at a Qin-period site, and a pit of ceremonial armor made of carved pieces of limestone. The stone-armor pit is strewn with thousands of limestone plates that are charred by a fire nobody can explain. Tests show that the pit containing the cauldron and the entertainers covers about 960 square yards (800 square meters), but officials granted permission for less than 9 percent of it to be opened by the 1999 test excavation. A full-scale excavation will wait until authorities feel that the time is right.
Meanwhile the land has already shifted back from archaeological time to the ageless rhythms of the countryside. Local peasants have planted pomegranate trees on the site, and the fruit is coming into season 20 feet (6 meters) above the unknown treasures. The archaeologists have already moved on. They have opened a third experimental pit, in which they found 12 life-size statues. It's another breakthrough: the nonmilitary figures wear hats and long robes; their hands are crossed at their waists. Perhaps they are government officials. And so the puzzle expands, piece by piece emerging from the red Shaanxi soil.

Twenty-five miles (40 kilometers) west of the Terra-cotta Warriors Museum, I find a harvest of a different sort: carefully arranged rows of terra-cotta pigs, sheep, goats, and dogs excavated from the tomb complex of Han Jing Di. This site is one of Xian's newest tourist attractions, open to visitors since the end of 1999. It too is an excavation in progress—as I can see from the animal pit, where some of the sheep are still half-uncovered, wading in dust up to their fattened flanks.

"In the first level we've found more than 400 terra-cotta dogs, 200 sheep, and we're still not sure how many pigs," says archaeologist Ma Yongying. "They were put in the tomb to feed the emperor."

Perhaps this is to be expected from a dynasty whose founder, Liu Bang, rose to power with the assistance of military supporters who had been dog butchers. Despite its humble beginnings, the Han has always been seen as one of China's most successful dynasties, ruling through a combination of pragmatism and precise organization. Indeed these characteristics are reflected in the relics that are emerging from the tomb complex, which is known as Han Yangling. Since 1990, when a construction project accidentally came across a pit of terra-cotta soldiers, archaeologists have excavated a large collection of burial items that say more about everyday life than war: animals, chariots, spades, saws, adzes, chisels, plowshares, miniature granaries, ladles, stoves, steamers, and measuring devices. Considering that Han Jing Di came to power only 53 years after the burial of Qin Shi Huang Di and his terra-cotta army, these preliminary discoveries seem to indicate a change in philosophy—and, quite possibly, a reaction against the earlier dynasty.

"Qin Shi Huang was a tyrant. Whatever he wanted, he got," says Liu Qingzhu, director of the Chinese Institute of Archaeology in Beijing. "His tomb didn't have to follow a system, so you might have certain figures over here and different ones somewhere else. But what we've found at Han Yangling is very orderly—each pit contains certain objects arranged in a certain way; it's all very regular."

Over the course of a 17-year reign that ended in 141 b.c., Han Jing Di governed by the most unpretentious of slogans: "Wu wei er zhi," a Taoist saying that means "Do nothing in order to govern," or, essentially, rule as unobtrusively as possible. Historians claim that whereas peasants paid half their crops in taxes under Qin Shi Huang Di, Han Jing Di levied only 3 percent. Mandatory corvée was dramatically reduced. There were no major building projects on the scale of the Great Wall. And the empire, according to historical texts, flourished.
Archaeology may very well reinforce this view, providing an unprecedented look at political organization under the Han. While Han Jing Di's tomb mound, like the burial site of Qin Shi Huang Di, won't be opened anytime soon, experts have been excavating a series of 11 of the 86 satellite pits that surround the tumulus.

"We think that every pit might represent a specific government bureau," says Wang Baoping, who has worked at Han Yangling since 1990. "In two pits we've even found official chops that give the names of specific departments." One of these chops, or seals, identifies the office in charge of the imperial kitchen, which may explain why there are so many animals in this part of the tomb complex. Other relics include hundreds of terra-cotta figures of soldiers, eunuchs, and women. Unlike the statues of Qin Shi Huang Di, which were mostly formed by hand, the figures at Han Yangling were made entirely with molds—although craftsmen retouched the faces to give them individual expressions. The biggest difference, though, is simply size: most of the Han Yangling figures are roughly one-third life-size.

"We think of the early Han dynasty as a period when the emperors were thrifty," says Ma Yongying. "The objects here are much smaller than the Qin, probably in order to save materials and manpower. And some of the gold relics we've found are merely plated with gold."

But while the Han may have seemed thrifty compared with the Qin, the discoveries at Han Yangling reflect a culture that still valued extravagant burials. Archaeologists have already uncovered more than 40,000 objects from the satellite pits, another group of pits to the south, and a cluster of nobles' tombs. There's still the untouched emperor's burial mound, as well as two separate tombs for Han Jing Di's empress and favorite concubine. The entire tomb complex is expected to yield between 300,000 and 500,000 relics.

"There are 31 more pits surrounding the empress's mound," says Li Gang, the youngest archaeologist at Han Yangling. "And we're testing the concubine's tomb, where we expect to find more pits. Whenever we're finished with all of that, there are still more than 5,000 other Han tombs scattered across this area. That should give you some sense of how much work we still have to do."

He gives a tired grin, a 28-year-old going on 100. And suddenly I have a sense of how many people like this young man have been involved in the constantly expanding puzzle of Xian's imperial past. I imagine those who built these two imperial tombs centuries ago—artisans, planners, laborers—and then I think about all the present-day archaeologists, chemists, historians, and art experts who are uncovering and making sense of the new finds. Somewhere in the midst of all this effort are the touchstones of a civilization: the brilliant creativity that first inspired the concept of a unified empire and the steady pragmatism that kept it going for more than 2,000 years.

But this is a lot to think about, and once again I focus on the finest detail—the bulge of a terra-cotta muscle, the curve of a sculpted bone. I remember Duan Qingbo standing awestruck next to the potbellied statue, and I recall a sunny afternoon when the two of us sat on top of Qin Shi Huang Di's tomb mound. We were facing south, gazing toward the Li Mountains. Directly below, a group of peasants were planting corn. Next to the peasants, a cluster of archaeologists conducted soil tests. Duan could identify with both—he was the son of peasants, and he had spent more than a decade excavating around the Xian region. A Stone Forest cigarette hung from his lip. I asked him if he'd like to open the tomb on which we sat.

"The truth is, even if we do excavate it, we might not completely understand what we find," he said, laughing. "We need to move slowly with our excavations. After all, we have children, grandchildren. Let them open it."