The wood in the pits of terracotta figures and its architectural application

Abstract

Ever since the pits of terracotta warriors and horses in China were discovered and opened to the public, a number of questions remained unsolved: what kinds of wood were selected for building the pits, how the wood was used in the pits' architecture and where was the giant volume of wood collected from? In this study, twenty pieces of charcoal specimens from Pit 1 and Pit 2 were examined with the Scanning Electron Microscope and identified as Abies, Tusga, Picea (all three genera in Pinaceae) and Phoebe (Lauraceae) woods. With the former works, it is concluded that the woods in the pits were mainly from the group of gymnosperms (95%) and few from that of angiosperms (5%). It is deduced that the wood in the pits was probably collected from the areas nearby.