Workshops in China’s Qin dynasty seemed to have “distinct yet overlapping” roles in the production of the world-famous Terracotta Army, according to a recently published study that used new techniques to examine the statues.

Using non-invasive scans, researchers found different types of materials in the warrior statues that could be traced to at least two types of workshops. This was the “first scientific evidence” to support the theory that manufacturers could be distinguished by the clay sources or types of paste they used.

The findings sparked further discussion about the logistics and supply-chain management of the Terracotta Army and was a “significant step forward” in understanding its construction, the researchers said in a September paper published in the academic journal Archaeometry.

The study was a collaboration between the University College of London’s Institute of Archaeology and Emperor Qin Shihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum in China.

Researchers argued that each Terracotta Army statue was likely crafted by a “single group of artisans” in a workshop instead of being assembled from various mass-produced modules. This conclusion was informed by the “close chemical composition of different parts of individual statues.”

The Terracotta Army, described as the “eighth wonder of the world,” is thought to contain around 7,000 statues created in the third century B.C. as funerary art buried with Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China.

UCL researchers used techniques such as portable X‐ray fluorescence spectroscopy to examine the ancient ceramics, revealing micro-geochemical patterning within the clay paste of the statues.

Researchers found differences in chemical composition between figures marked with the words “Gong” and “Xianyang,” which seemed to represent the products of two workshops.

It is possible that artisans from the two workshops treated their raw materials differently and perhaps even used a single clay source but added temper of different types and quantities, which resulted in the different geochemical patterns in the ceramic, the researchers said.

Using this method of analysis, it might be possible to deduce the origin of small broken fragments of Terracotta Army statues and attribute them to one of the two workshop types, they added.

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