The Terracotta Army was brightly coloured until we dug it up.

On 29 March 1974 farmers digging a well near Xi'an hit the figures – over 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots and hundreds of horses, buried around 210 BC. They wore red from cinnabar, green from malachite, blue from azurite. In dry air the lacquer beneath the paint can curl away in 15 seconds.

Useful: Excavating is also destroying – which is why many sites are deliberately left in the ground.

Source: en.wikipedia.org

Archaeologie China Kunst

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