Weapons of the Terracotta Army
The Ancients
History Hit
4.7 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2022
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When someone says the Terracotta Army, you’d be forgiven for instantly thinking of rows upon rows of life size warriors, arranged in three pits as part of the Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s huge mausoleum complex. But what’s arguably an even more fascinating aspect of these Warriors are the wide range of bronze weapons that they are buried with. From swords to spears to hooks to crossbow triggers, hundreds of these weapons survive in extraordinary condition.
What can we learn from these weapons about the whole making of the Terracotta Army? Where were they made? Who oversaw their production? What do they reveal about the all-important logistics behind the creation of the Terracotta Army? To explain all, UCL honorary research fellow Dr Xiuzhen Li returned to the podcast.
Listen to Xiuzhen’s previous episode, The Terracotta Army.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the Engines on History Hit. |
| 0:11.7 | I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's podcast where you might remember a couple |
| 0:15.8 | of months back we had a podcast episode all about the terracotta army, the terracotta warriors |
| 0:21.7 | with Dr. Xu Jin Li. |
| 0:24.4 | Now Xu Jin, when we did that podcast we also recorded another one, a follow up episode |
| 0:30.3 | which we're releasing today. |
| 0:32.4 | And in this episode rather than an overview of this iconic part of ancient China from |
| 0:37.4 | the late third century BC and the chin dynasty, rather than an overview we're now going to |
| 0:42.3 | be delving into the detail of a specific part of these terracotta warriors. |
| 0:47.4 | We're going to be focusing in on the bronze weapons that I've been found that have survived |
| 0:52.7 | really remarkably alongside the warriors in these various pits. |
| 0:58.3 | So we're talking halberts, lances, spears, swords, hooks, crossbow bolts, ceremonial weapons |
| 1:07.2 | and more. |
| 1:08.2 | We're going to be talking about these various types of weapons and what their quality |
| 1:13.0 | reveals about the logistics behind making the terracotta army, these terracotta warriors, |
| 1:20.8 | what they're revealing for instance through inscriptions and so on about how they were |
| 1:25.8 | made, where they were made, what workshops for instance and who ordered their construction, |
| 1:32.0 | who ordered the building of certain weapons, etc, etc. |
| 1:36.8 | Xu Jin, she's done a lot of work on this topic, she answers all of these questions and |
| 1:40.7 | so much more. |
| 1:42.0 | This was a great episode, I love these episodes where we can delve into the detail of a specific |
| 1:47.0 | aspect of a well known topic from ancient history. |
... |
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