Women and children younger than 15 may have helped make China’s famous Terracotta Army, according to a new study that analyzed fingerprints preserved in the clay figures buried with Emperor Qin Shi Huang more than 2,200 years ago.
The research, published in the Journal of Cultural Heritage, challenges the assumption that the monumental project relied exclusively on adult male artisans. Using a statistical model to estimate the age and sex of the people who left the prints, researchers found evidence of a more diverse workforce than previously documented.
The team analyzed 79 well-preserved fingerprints from 36 terracotta warriors recovered from one excavation area in Pit 1 of the emperor’s mausoleum in Xi’an, China. The model estimated that 45% of the prints came from adult men, 32.7% from adult women and 22.3% from juveniles younger than 15.
These figures are estimates based on fingerprints, however, and do not represent the actual proportions of workers in each group. The researchers caution that the results come from a limited sample and may not represent everyone involved in producing the army.
What fingerprints reveal about the artisans
Workers left the fingerprints as they handled and shaped the clay used to make the life-sized soldiers. The researchers measured the width of the raised ridges in each print, a feature that can offer clues about a person’s age and sex.
Because ridge measurements overlap between demographic groups, the team used a Bayesian statistical model to estimate the proportions of different groups across the sample. The method accounts for uncertainty more effectively than approaches that try to classify each fingerprint individually.
The results suggest that adult women and young people played a role in producing the figures. They provide biological evidence that complements historical records indicating that women and children participated in some forms of craft production during the Qin dynasty.
The researchers also identified important limitations to their approach. Fingerprint ridge patterns can be difficult to distinguish between adult women and adolescent boys, while clay shrinkage during firing can affect measurements. The model also relied on a modern European reference dataset, which may not fully represent the population of ancient China.
The researchers therefore do not identify individual artisans or establish precisely what tasks each group performed. Instead, their results offer a statistical picture of the people who may have handled the clay.
How the Terracotta Army was made
The Terracotta Army forms part of the mausoleum complex built for Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor to unify China under a centralized imperial state in 221 B.C. He ruled until his death in 210 B.C., and the burial complex was designed to serve him in the afterlife.
The underground army contains thousands of life-sized soldiers, horses and chariots arranged in military formations. Archaeologists discovered the site in 1974, when local farmers digging a well uncovered fragments of the figures near Xi’an, in Shaanxi province.
The warriors were not identical statues. Artisans made their heads, arms, legs, bodies and other components separately and assembled them, with variations in facial features, hairstyles and armor. Previous research has found evidence of an organized production system that distributed clay and other materials among workshops.
The new fingerprint study focuses on one small section of this vast complex. It does not establish that women and children worked on every part of the army or that the estimated proportions apply to the entire mausoleum project.
What the findings say about work in ancient China
The involvement of younger workers would be consistent with historical evidence of apprenticeships during the Qin dynasty. Legal records describe systems in which experienced artisans trained apprentices, suggesting that craft skills could be passed between generations within organized workshops.
The study does not establish whether the children whose fingerprints were analyzed were apprentices or what specific tasks they performed. Their presence nevertheless raises new questions about how the imperial project divided labor and trained workers.
The findings also challenge a broader assumption about large-scale ancient craftsmanship: that monumental projects relied almost entirely on adult men. The evidence suggests that the production of the Terracotta Army may have involved a wider range of people working within a highly organized system.
Further research using fingerprints from other excavation areas could help determine whether the same pattern appears across the mausoleum. For now, the study offers a new way to investigate the people behind one of China’s best-known archaeological discoveries, while leaving the full composition of its workforce unresolved.