Page 370 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

some precise metaphysical idea but to produce a self-sustaining version of the world — a fictive
and efficacious reality. The practical constraints of such image-making must have played a deci-
sive role in the creation of the First Emperor s necropolis. For how, after all, does one reproduce
13
"all the myriad waterways," or the requisite personnel and materiel of an entire army? How
does one supervise the countless logistic, technological, and aesthetic problems implicated
in re-creating the world?
Supported by the unparalleled power and economic resources of the state and using all
available representational modes and strategies, the First Emperor s necropolis could have been
created as a comprehensive replica of the real world. Chinese tombs and burials signified the
power and status of their builders and occupants: during the Bronze Age, the ability to sacrifice
the lives of retainers, soldiers, concubines, or animals, or to put precious articles into the tomb
constituted a sign of power; by the Qin period, the ability to have them depicted — possessing
the aesthetic, cognitive, technological, and economic resources to reproduce the world —
became a more efficient way of asserting power and status.

The terra-cotta army and the Lintong necropolis show that complex representation is not
a result or fulfillment of some preconceived religious doctrine, nor a mirror of Qin ideology.
Rather, the most consistent ideas regarding the afterlife are to be found in the tombs and mon-
uments themselves, where current metaphysical and religious conceptions intersected with
personal wishes and anxieties and were transformed by the practical constraints and conditions
of making the afterlife a material reality. 14 LK

1 For a detailed treatment of the various aspects of the 7 See Hu 1987 and Sun 1996. For granaries see Ledderose
terra-cotta army, see the report on the excavation of Pit i, and Schlombs 1990,164-77.
Shaanxi 1988!); Yuan 1990; Wang 19943; Ledderose and 8 See, for example, Hubei 1984, pis. 69-71; Hensn 1986, pis.
Schlombs 1990, and Kesner 1995, all of which contain 106-108.
extensive references to further sources. 9 For the concept of mingqi, see Cai 1986 and discussion in
w
n
2 Wu 1995,114-17. For a reconstruction of the Lishan Kesner 1995,116-117, ^ further references.
necropolis see Yuan 1990,1-63; Wang 1994!?; Yang 1985; 10 Falkenhausen 1990; Falkenhsusen 1994; Poo 1998,157-177.
Thorp 19833 and bibliographies therein. 11 Poo 1998,176 - 77.
3 Shasnxi 1991. 12 Fslkenhausen 1994.
4 Yusn 1990, 36; Wsng 1987, 41 - 42. 13 Poo 1988,176 -177.
5 Wang 19943,1-24. 14 This is more fully developed in Kesner 1995 and Kesner
6 The stylistic sspects of the figures 3re discussed in Kesner 1996.
1995-

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