彩绘秦兵马俑.pdfVIP

BY BROOK LARMER PHOTOGRAPHS BY O. LOUIS MAZZATENTA It was a dazzling spectacle: a life-size army ofpainted clay soldiers buried to guard an emperors tomb. Now archaeologists and artists, armed with the latest tools and techniques, are bringing that ancient vision back to life. TERRA-COTTA jL\RRIORS . In IN AN EARTHEN PIT IN CENTRAL CHINA, under what used to be their villages persimmon orchard, three middle-aged women are hunched over an ancient jigsaw puzzle. Yang Rongrong, a cheerful 57-year-old with a pageboy haircut, turns over a jagged piece in her callused hands and fits it into the perfect spot. The other women laugh and murmur their approval, as if enjoying an afternoon amusement in their village near the city of Xian. What Yang and her friends are doing, in fact, is piecing together the 2,200-year-old mystery of the terra-cotta army, part of the celebrated (and still dimly understood) burial complex of Chinas first emperor, Qin Shi Huang Di. It usually takes Yang and her co-workers many days to transform a heap of clay fragments into a full-size warrior, but today they are lucky, accomplishing the task in a matter of hours. I have no special talent; insists Yang, who has been solving such puzzles since 1974, when farmers from her village ofXiyang first unearthed pottery and a sculpted head while digging a well for their orchard. But nearly every warrior here has passed through (Continued on page 86) 74 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC· JUNE 2012 (Continuedfrom page 74) my hands. Having bottom of the pit, where a layer of mud created helped reas