Forty Thousand Arms for a Single Emperor: From Chemical Data to the Labor Organization Behind the Bronze Arrows of the Terracotta Army

Abstract

This paper explores the integration of chemical data with metric studies and spatial analyses of archaeological artifacts to investigate questions of specialization, standardization and production organization behind large--scale technological enterprises. The main analytical focus is placed on the 40,000 bronze arrowheads recovered with the Terracotta Army in the First Emperor's Mausoleum, Xi'an, China. Based on the identification by portable XRF of chemical clusters that correspond to individual metal batches, and combined with a study of their context in the tomb complex, we argue that the manufacture of arrows was organized via a cellular production model with various multi--skilled units, rather than as a single production line. This system favored more adaptable and efficient logistical organization that facilitated dynamic cross--craft interaction while maintaining remarkable degrees of standardization. We discuss the use of 'the batch' as an analytical category and how our method might be applied to other studies of craft organization in complex societies and imperial systems. KeywordsTerracotta Army, craft specialization, standardization, chemical analysis, pXRF Forty thousand arms for a single emperor: from chemical data to the labor organization behind the bronze arrows of the Terracotta Army Craft specialization and standardization are topics of continuing interest in archaeology. Since the work of Gordon Childe (1930, 1936, 1958 see also Trigger 1986), craft specialization has been recognized as an extremely important reflection of, and motor for, wider social and political change. A widely accepted assumption is that, wherever we can document full--time specialization in one technological sector, equivalent levels of specialization are likely to exist in other crafts and activity spheres: in the simplest form of this statement, Childe noted that full--time itinerant metallurgists required others to produce their food. Even though Childe's perspectives have been greatly revised and refined in recent years, it remains true that his focus on the organization of production is not only insightful from a technological perspective but also informative about broader social structures (e.g. Rice 1981;Brumfield and Earle 1987;Clark and Parry 1990;Stark 1995;Wailes 1996). Another common assumption is that craft specialization and standardization cannot exist without one another, although ethnographic and archaeological studies have shown that this is not necessarily the case (e.g. Hagstrum 1985; P. J. Arnold 1991; Blackman et al 1991; Roux 1993;Costin and Hagstrum 1995;Rice 1989;M. T. Stark 1991;Kvamme et al 1996;Longacre 1999;Underhill 2003;Humphris et al 2009). Twenty years on, Costin's (1991) review paper on the definition, identification and explanation of craft organization remains a foundational contribution to this field. Since the publication of this paper, numerous researchers have been prompted to assess the context, concentration, scale and intensity of different crafts as they are document...

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