Imperial Logistics: the Making of the Terracotta Army

Project Director: Professor Andrew Bevan

Imperial Logistics: the Making of the Terracotta Army has two main research aims:
a) investigating the crafting methods and logistical organisation behind the construction of the Terracotta Army and the broader mausoleum of the First Emperor of China; and
b) developing novel hypotheses and methods, via artefact-scale metric analysis, materials science and spatial modelling, that may be used as a comparative platform for studying craft specialisation, logistical organisation, cross-craft interactions and strategies of enforced social cohesion in emerging imperial systems.
Given the project's wider context as an international collaboration centred on a World Heritage site, two further important aims are an improved transfer of specialist knowledge among western and Chinese scholars, and active engagement and dissemination beyond academic circles.

Professor Andrew Bevan : [email protected]