New Secrets of the Terracotta Warriors

A new documentary to be broadcast on Channel 4 this weekend is largely based on research carried out by a team from the UCL Institute of Archaeology, in collaboration with colleagues at the Emperor Qin Shihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum in China. New Secrets of the Terracotta Warriors is the first public presentation of some of the work led by Dr Xiuzhen Janice Li, Dr Andrew Bevan, Professor Marcos Martinón-Torres and their team, which involves a number of innovative scientific methods and unexpected results. Amongst the many new findings, the film reveals the true extent of the site and number of warriors and that the weapons carried by the warriors were full military grade, rather than replicas: they were designed to kill as efficiently in the afterlife as in this one. New insights into how the figures were made, including revolutionary 3D computer modelling of the warriors' heads, challenge traditional explanations and change our understanding of how a worforce of thousands was organised to build a mausoleum for China's First Emperor some 2,200 years ago. The discovery of China's Terracotta Army in 1974 captured the imagination of the world. But that first dig only revealed a fraction of this enormous and extraordinary treasure.  Since then, scientists have resumed work on the site, and their research has turned up a series of new discoveries about the warriors and the people who made them.