What is archaeology as a corrective?

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What was the geographical and historical shape of imperial China from the accession of the future First Emperor as King of Qin in 247 BC to the death of Emperor Wu of Han in 87 BC, and what range of sources survives to reconstruct it?

Survey and sources for imperial China from the accession of the future First Emperor as King of Qin in 247 BC to the death of Emperor Wu of Han in 87 BC, the geographical setting and the historical arc from the Warring States through Qin unification in 221 BC and the fall of Qin to the founding and consolidation of the Han empire, and the nature, range and limitations of the evidence, above all Sima Qian's Shiji and Ban Gu's Hanshu, both Han-era grand histories, corrected by the contemporary archaeology of the terracotta army, the Qin legal and administrative slips and the Mawangdui Han tombs

A geographical and historical survey of imperial China from the accession of the future First Emperor as King of Qin in 247 BC to the death of Emperor Wu of Han in 87 BC, the arc from Warring States to Qin unification to Han empire, and the problem of writing it from Sima Qian's Han-era Shiji, corrected by the terracotta army and the Qin and Han slips.

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Quick answer

This survey covers imperial China from 247 BC, when the future First Emperor came to the throne of Qin, to 87 BC, the death of Emperor Wu of Han, roughly 160 years. The arc runs from the divided Warring States, through Qin's unification in 221 BC and its swift collapse by 206 BC, to the founding of Han under Gaozu in 202 BC and its growth into an expansionist empire under Emperor Wu (141 to 87 BC). The evidence base is unusually narrow at the top: almost everything rests on two Han-era grand histories, Sima Qian's Shiji (c. 91 BC) and Ban Gu's Hanshu, and the Shiji shapes nearly all later tradition, carrying a Han-legitimising, anti-Qin frame. The great corrective is contemporary archaeology, the terracotta army (1974), the Shuihudi (1975) and Liye (2002) Qin slips, and the Mawangdui Han tombs (1972 to 1974), which lets historians such as Bodde, Pines and Lewis test the written record against the ground.

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Historians

What this dot point is asking

The survey and sources strand asks you to set the scene for the whole period BEFORE you study any one reign in detail. Two things are wanted. First, a geographical and historical SURVEY: where the Chinese world was in 247 BC, when the future First Emperor came to the throne of Qin, and the broad arc that carries the period from the divided Warring States, through Qin's unification in 221 BC and its rapid collapse, to the founding and consolidation of the Han empire down to the death of Emperor Wu in 87 BC. Second, and just as important, the NATURE, RANGE AND LIMITATIONS of the evidence: above all the two great Han-era histories, Sima Qian's Shiji and Ban Gu's Hanshu, the problem that both were written under the Han and that the Shiji shapes almost all later tradition, and the way contemporary archaeology now corrects them. This dot point does not ask you to narrate the campaigns or reforms in depth; it asks what the period looked like as a whole and how far we can trust the sources that tell us about it.

In plain English

Picture a continent of seven rival kingdoms that have fought for centuries, until one of them, ruthless and efficient, conquers all the others and declares a single empire under its first ever "emperor". That empire is so harshly run that it cracks apart within a generation, and after a brutal civil war a new ruling family takes over and settles in for the long haul. That is the story arc, from the accession of the boy king of Qin in 247 BC to the death of the great Han emperor in 87 BC, roughly 160 years.

Now the catch, which is really what this dot point is about. Almost everything we know about that whole story was written up by two authors working for the SECOND empire, the Han, the one that took over. It is like relying on a company's official history, written by the firm that bought it out, to understand the firm it replaced. Useful for the facts, but you have to watch the spin, especially the spin that paints the old Qin regime as a monster who deserved to fall. Luckily, archaeologists have since dug up the losers' own paperwork and treasures, boxes of Qin officials' records and sealed Han tombs full of documents, so we can fact-check the official write-up against evidence nobody edited.

The answer

The geographical setting

The events of this period play out across the heartland of the Chinese world: the great plains of the Yellow River in the north, the Wei River valley (the Guanzhong basin) in the west, where both Qin's capital Xianyang and the later Han capital Chang'an stood, and the Yangtze basin and the south, long dominated by the state of Chu. Ringed by mountains and river passes, the Wei valley gave whichever power held it a defensible base from which to command the plains. Over the period the political geography is transformed: a patchwork of independent states becomes a single centralised empire, administered from the northwest, whose reach under Emperor Wu would push far out into Central Asia, the northern steppe and the south.

The historical arc

The period is best held in mind as a single arc in four movements.

The Warring States and the rise of Qin (to 221 BC). In 247 BC the Chinese world was still divided among seven major states locked in the Warring States struggle. The western state of Qin, remade a century earlier by the Legalist reforms of Shang Yang into a centralised, merit-and-punishment war machine, was steadily out-organising its more aristocratic rivals. Its young king, Ying Zheng, who acceded in 247 BC, would complete the conquest.
Qin unification and collapse (221 to 206 BC). Qin conquered the other six states between 230 and 221 BC, and in 221 BC Ying Zheng proclaimed himself Shi Huangdi, First Emperor, intending his line to rule for ten thousand generations. Yet the dynasty barely outlived him. He died in 210 BC; rebellion broke out under Chen Sheng and Wu Guang in 209 BC; and amid disputed succession and widespread revolt the Qin collapsed by 206 BC.
The Chu-Han contention and the founding of Han (206 to 202 BC). Two rebel leaders, the aristocrat Xiang Yu of Chu and the commoner Liu Bang, fought for the succession to Qin. Liu Bang prevailed at the Battle of Gaixia in 202 BC and founded the Han dynasty as Emperor Gaozu, inheriting a war-weary realm.
Han consolidation and the age of Emperor Wu (202 to 87 BC). The early Han rebuilt and centralised, retaining much of Qin's administrative machinery while softening its harshness. This culminated in the long reign of Emperor Wu (141 to 87 BC), who turned the consolidated state into an expansionist empire, campaigning against the Xiongnu, opening the routes west that became the Silk Road, and making Confucianism state orthodoxy. His death in 87 BC closes the period.

The sources: two Han-era grand histories

The written record for this period rests on a strikingly small number of great historiographical works, and two dominate. The first and most important is the Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian), compiled by Sima Qian (c. 145 to 86 BC) and completed around 91 BC. A monumental history of the Chinese world down to his own day, it is the backbone of almost everything we know about the Qin and the early Han; Sima Qian, serving as Grand Historian at the Han court, drew on surviving records, and his separate chapters (annals, chronological tables, treatises, and biographies) preserve enormous detail. The second is the Hanshu (Book of Han), compiled by Ban Gu in the 1st century AD and, after his death in AD 92, completed by his sister Ban Zhao; it is a focused history of the Western Han and reuses and extends much of Sima Qian's material.

Their importance creates their central problem, the one this dot point is built around. Both are Han-era works, and the Shiji in particular is so foundational that it shapes almost all later tradition: subsequent writers inherit its framework, its stories and often its judgements. A successor dynasty needs to explain why its predecessor deserved to fall, and Han writers supplied that explanation by casting Qin as a brutal, arrogant Legalist tyranny doomed by its lack of benevolence. The classic statement is Jia Yi's essay "The Faults of Qin" (Guo Qin lun), written in the early 2nd century BC and quoted by Sima Qian: Qin conquered by force but fell because it failed to rule with virtue. The most notorious episodes of the Qin, the burning of books in 213 BC and the "burying of scholars" in 212 BC, reach us through this hostile, moralising frame. None of this makes the histories worthless; it means their judgements must be read as the verdict of an interested successor, and their facts corroborated where possible.

Archaeology as a corrective

What rescues the period from total dependence on the Han histories is a wealth of contemporary archaeology, unfiltered by later hostility, most of it recovered only in the last half-century.

The terracotta army (1974). Farmers digging a well near Lintong, east of Xi'an in Shaanxi, uncovered the first pit of what proved to be an army of thousands of life-size, individually modelled pottery soldiers, horses and chariots (estimates run to around 8,000 figures), buried to guard the First Emperor's tomb. It is direct physical evidence of the scale of Qin resources and organisation.
The Qin legal and administrative slips. The Shuihudi Qin bamboo slips, excavated in Hubei in 1975 from the tomb of a Qin official, preserve legal statutes and administrative texts, revealing a codified, procedural legal system rather than mere savagery. The Liye Qin slips, a vast cache of county administrative documents recovered from a well at Liye in Hunan in 2002, show the everyday paperwork of Qin local government in extraordinary detail.
The Mawangdui Han tombs (1972 to 1974). These sealed early-Han tombs near Changsha, of a marquis's family, yielded silk manuscripts of philosophical, medical and historical texts, painted funerary banners, lacquerware and a famously preserved body, direct contemporary evidence for early Han thought, material culture and burial belief.

This archaeology cannot supply motive or high politics; much of it is funerary and administrative. But it lets historians test the Han literary tradition against contemporary physical facts, rather than taking the hostile written record on trust.

How to read a source on this topic

Section IV sources for this period typically describe (never reproduce verbatim) a passage from the Shiji or Hanshu, a Han condemnation of Qin, an object such as the terracotta warriors, or a Qin or Han administrative or funerary find. Three reading habits.

First, identify whether the source is written (later, Han-era, and often shaped by the hostile view of Qin) or archaeological (contemporary Qin or Han, and usually mute on motive and high politics). This single distinction usually decides how you handle it.

Second, for any written source, fix WHO produced it and WHEN relative to the events. Sima Qian wrote around 91 BC and Ban Gu a century and a half later still, both under the Han that had replaced Qin; that allegiance is the most important fact about them. Always ask whether a "cruel Qin tyrant" or a "Heaven withdrew the mandate" detail is contemporary fact or successor-dynasty framing.

Third, move from content to reliability to usefulness to perspective, and reach a judgement. For this period, the strongest answers explicitly play the written record and the archaeology off against each other, using the Shuihudi and Liye slips or the Mawangdui finds to test what the Han histories claim.

Model exam responses

1. Source-analysis response (using a Shiji passage on the fall of Qin). "A passage from the Shiji describing the collapse of Qin is useful evidence, but its reliability is shaped by its origin. It is our fullest narrative of the collapse, and Sima Qian, writing around 91 BC, drew on surviving records, so its factual core is valuable. However, he wrote under the Han, the dynasty that overthrew Qin and needed to justify doing so by presenting Qin's Legalist rule as a tyranny that lost Heaven's mandate; the moral framing follows Jia Yi's 'Faults of Qin'. The passage is therefore most reliable for the sequence of events and least reliable for its verdict on why Qin fell, and should be weighed against the Shuihudi and Liye Qin slips, which show a codified, working administration rather than mere savagery."

Marker's note: markers reward separating the reliable factual core from the hostile Han framing, and corroboration with contemporary archaeology rather than description alone.

2. Extended-response paragraph (the sources shape the whole period, not just Qin). "The defining feature of the evidence for this period is its narrowness at the top: almost the entire narrative from 247 to 87 BC descends from two Han-era grand histories, Sima Qian's Shiji and Ban Gu's Hanshu, and the Shiji is so foundational that it fixes the framework later writers simply inherit. As Yuri Pines argues, this means the demonised image of Qin is largely a construct of hostile successor tradition rather than a neutral record. The corrective is contemporary archaeology, the terracotta army, the Shuihudi and Liye slips, the Mawangdui tombs, recovered mostly since the 1970s, which lets historians such as Bodde test the histories against unedited physical evidence. The period is knowable, then, but only by reading its two great sources critically against the ground."

Marker's note: this paragraph scores because it argues a point about the source base as a whole and integrates named historians rather than listing them.

Command words and how to use a source

Outline/describe wants a small number of clearly separated points; explain wants a point, evidence and why it matters; assess/evaluate/to what extent wants a sustained argument reaching a supported judgement.

Using a source properly means four things every time: (1) content, what does it actually show or say; (2) reliability, who produced it, when, and for what purpose; (3) usefulness, what specific question can it help answer, and how far; (4) perspective, whose viewpoint does it represent. For this period, always state whether a source is a later Han-era history (the Shiji, the Hanshu, "The Faults of Qin") or contemporary archaeology (the terracotta army, the Qin slips, the Mawangdui tombs), since that fact usually decides its reliability.

Weaving in historiography means using a historian's named position as part of your argument, for example "as Pines argues, the demonised image of Qin is largely a construct of hostile Han tradition," used to qualify a specific claim, not dropped in as decoration.

Common exam traps

Narrating one reign instead of surveying the period: The survey strand is about the whole arc from 247 to 87 BC and the source base, not a deep account of the First Emperor or Emperor Wu alone. Keep the detail of reforms and campaigns for the other dot points.
Taking the Han histories' verdict on Qin at face value: Remember both the Shiji and the Hanshu were written under the Han, the successor dynasty with every reason to condemn Qin. Treat their moral judgements as an interested verdict, not neutral fact.
Confusing the two histories: The Shiji (Sima Qian, c. 91 BC) is the earlier, broader work that shapes the tradition; the Hanshu (Ban Gu, 1st century AD) is the later, focused history of the Western Han. Do not merge them or mistake their dates.
Ignoring the archaeology: The terracotta army, the Shuihudi and Liye slips and the Mawangdui tombs are exactly what lets you test the written record. An answer on sources that never mentions them misses the heart of the dot point.

Historians

Sima Qian (c. 145 to 86 BC), the Han Grand Historian, is the foundational written source; his Shiji preserves much accurate material but frames Qin within a hostile Han moral verdict inherited from Jia Yi.

Ban Gu (AD 32 to 92), compiler of the Hanshu (completed after his death by his sister Ban Zhao), gives the standard history of the Western Han and largely follows Sima Qian's framework for the earlier period.

Derk Bodde ("The State and Empire of Ch'in," in The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 1, 1986) provides the standard modern English narrative of the Qin while flagging its heavy reliance on Sima Qian.

Yuri Pines (The Everlasting Empire, 2012, and ed. Birth of an Empire: The State of Qin Revisited, 2014) argues that the demonised traditional image of Qin is largely a product of hostile Han and later historiography, and that archaeology reveals a more ordinary, effective administrative state.

Mark Edward Lewis (The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han, 2007) treats Qin and Han as one continuous imperial project, resisting the sharp moral break the Han histories draw between a wicked Qin and a virtuous Han.

Practice questions

Original practice questions graded from foundation to exam level, each with a full worked solution. Try them before revealing the solution.

foundation3 marksOutline the historical span of the period from 247 BC to 87 BC.

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A 3-mark "outline" needs the two endpoints and the shape of the arc between them.

The opening point: The period opens in 247 BC with the accession of the young Ying Zheng, the future First Emperor, as King of Qin, at a time when the Chinese world was still divided among the seven Warring States (1 mark).
The turning point: Qin conquered its rivals and unified China in 221 BC under Shi Huangdi, but the dynasty collapsed within about fifteen years, giving way after civil war to the Han, founded by Emperor Gaozu in 202 BC (1 mark).
The closing point: The period closes in 87 BC with the death of Emperor Wu of Han, whose long reign (141 to 87 BC) had turned the consolidated Han state into an expansionist empire (1 mark).

Marker's note: markers reward the correct BC endpoints and the arc Warring States to Qin unification to Han empire, not a detailed narrative of any one reign.

foundation4 marksOutline the main stages in the arc from the Warring States to the empire of Emperor Wu.

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A 4-mark "outline" needs four clearly separated stages, roughly one mark each.

Warring States and Qin's rise: Down to 221 BC the seven states fought for supremacy, with the western, Legalist-reformed state of Qin steadily out-organising its rivals (1 mark).
Qin unification and collapse: Qin conquered the six states and unified China in 221 BC under the First Emperor, but the dynasty fell within a few years of his death in 210 BC, amid rebellion from 209 BC (1 mark).
The founding of Han: After the Chu-Han civil war, Liu Bang defeated Xiang Yu at Gaixia in 202 BC and founded the Han dynasty as Emperor Gaozu, consolidating a battered, war-weary empire (1 mark).
Han consolidation to expansion: Over the following decades the Han centralised its administration, culminating in the long reign of Emperor Wu (141 to 87 BC), who launched sweeping expansion and reform (1 mark).

Marker's note: markers reward four distinct, correctly sequenced stages rather than one stage described at length.

foundation4 marksSource A (ExamExplained reconstruction): a Qin wooden administrative slip of the type recovered in bulk from a county well, recording the grain held in a local granary and the tax owed by named households, and dated by the regnal year of the First Emperor. Using Source A, describe what this type of evidence reveals about the Qin state and its value as a source for the period.

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A 4-mark "describe using the source" needs the source's content used, plus its type and value.

Content: Source A is a routine local record listing granary stores and the tax owed by named households, dated by the First Emperor's regnal year (1 mark).
What it reveals: It shows a Qin state that registered its population, taxed households individually and kept detailed written accounts at county level, evidence of a literate, bureaucratic administration reaching down to ordinary people (1 mark).
Type of source: It is contemporary Qin archaeology, of the kind recovered at Liye and Shuihudi, produced by the administration itself rather than by a later writer (1 mark).
Value: Because it is contemporary and administrative, it is a direct, unfiltered check on the much later hostile literary picture of Qin as merely a savage tyranny (1 mark).

Marker's note: markers reward direct use of Source A's detail (granary, household tax, regnal dating) and the point that its contemporary, administrative nature makes it a corrective to the later texts.

core5 marksExplain why the Han-dynasty origin of Sima Qian's Shiji creates a problem for reconstructing the Qin period.

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A 5-mark "explain" needs the source, the mechanism of bias, and its consequence.

The Shiji is our indispensable spine: Sima Qian, Grand Historian of the Han, completed the Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian) around 91 BC, and its chapters on Qin are the backbone of almost everything we know about the period; without it the Qin would be far more obscure (1 mark).
Its origin is the problem: It was written under the Han, the very dynasty that had overthrown Qin, and a successor dynasty needs to explain why its predecessor deserved to fall (1 mark).
The mechanism of bias: Han writers supplied that explanation by casting Qin as a brutal, arrogant Legalist tyranny doomed by its lack of benevolence, a moral template set by Jia Yi's essay "The Faults of Qin" (Guo Qin lun), which Sima Qian quotes (1 mark).
The consequence for us: Notorious episodes such as the burning of books (213 BC) and the "burying of scholars" (212 BC) reach us through this hostile frame, so the Shiji's judgements of Qin must be read as an interested verdict, not neutral fact (1 mark).
The corrective: This is why contemporary Qin archaeology, which is not filtered through Han hostility, is essential to test the text (1 mark).

Marker's note: markers reward naming Sima Qian and the Shiji, dating it to c. 91 BC, explaining the hostile-successor mechanism, and drawing the consequence for how the source must be read.

core6 marksSource B (ExamExplained reconstruction): a passage in the style of a Han grand history describing the fall of Qin, presenting the First Emperor's dynasty as collapsing because its harsh Legalist rule had lost the sympathy of the people, so that Heaven withdrew its mandate. Using Source B and your own knowledge, assess the reliability of this type of source as evidence for why the Qin dynasty fell.

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A 6-mark "assess reliability" needs content, origin and perspective, a limitation, and a judgement.

Content: Source B explains Qin's fall morally, as the loss of popular sympathy and the withdrawal of Heaven's mandate from a harsh Legalist regime (1 mark).
Origin and perspective: Sources of this kind descend from Han-era grand histories, above all Sima Qian's Shiji (c. 91 BC) and later Ban Gu's Hanshu, written under and for the dynasty that had replaced Qin and needed to justify doing so (2 marks).
Reliability limitation: The "loss of the mandate" framing follows Jia Yi's "The Faults of Qin" and serves a Han didactic purpose, warning Han emperors against tyranny, so it may flatten a messier set of causes (the sudden death of the First Emperor in 210 BC, a disputed succession, the revolt from 209 BC, and elite resentment) into a single moral lesson (2 marks).
Judgement: Such a source is reliable evidence for how the Han explained and legitimised their own rise, but its moral verdict on Qin must be corroborated against contemporary evidence such as the Qin administrative slips before being taken as a neutral account of the collapse (1 mark).

Marker's note: markers reward identifying the Han moralising frame and the mandate theme, and calling for corroboration rather than accepting the source's explanation at face value.

exam8 marksSource C (ExamExplained reconstruction): a description of a sealed early-Han tomb containing a lacquered coffin, silk manuscripts of philosophical and medical texts, painted banners and an inventory of grave goods, of the type revealed by modern excavation near Changsha. Using Source C and your own knowledge, assess the usefulness and reliability of archaeological evidence of this kind for reconstructing the early Han period.

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An 8-mark "assess usefulness and reliability" needs content, usefulness, a reliability limitation, and a judgement.

Content from the source: Source C describes a sealed early-Han elite tomb with a lacquered coffin, silk manuscripts, painted banners and a grave-goods inventory (2 marks).
Usefulness: Archaeology of this kind (the Mawangdui tombs, excavated near Changsha in 1972 to 1974) is highly useful because it is contemporary early-Han material: it preserves texts, art, material culture and burial belief directly, independent of the later historiographical tradition, and even hands us versions of works otherwise known only from much later copies (3 marks).
Reliability and limitation: It is more reliable than a literary source for these physical and textual realities, but it is elite and funerary, so it reflects the wealth and beliefs of a marquis's family rather than ordinary life, and it is largely mute on high politics, motive and the reasons for events (2 marks).
Judgement: Such archaeology is therefore most valuable as a direct, contemporary check on and enrichment of the written record, best used alongside the Shiji and Hanshu rather than instead of them (1 mark).

Marker's note: markers reward separating what the tomb proves (contemporary texts, art, burial belief) from what it cannot show (politics, motive), and using it to complement rather than replace the written tradition.

exam25 marksTo what extent does the Han-era origin of our main written sources limit what we can know about the Qin and early Han period from 247 to 87 BC? In your response, refer to relevant sources and historians' interpretations.

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A Band-6 response needs a clear thesis, argument lines tied to dated evidence, engagement with historiography, a model paragraph, and a judgement answering "to what extent."

Thesis: The Han-era origin of our main narratives genuinely limits them, embedding a hostile, moralising frame for Qin and a dynastic interest for Han, but it does not make the period unknowable: Sima Qian and Ban Gu preserved a great deal of accurate material, and a rich contemporary archaeology now checks and sometimes corroborates the texts, so the limitation is real but manageable.
Argument line 1: the grand histories are our indispensable spine: Almost all our chronology comes from Sima Qian's Shiji (completed c. 91 BC) and Ban Gu's Hanshu (compiled later, in the 1st century AD): the accession of the future First Emperor as King of Qin in 247 BC, unification in 221 BC, the First Emperor's death in 210 BC, the fall of Qin, the founding of Han in 202 BC and the reign of Emperor Wu to 87 BC. Without these works the period would be far more obscure.
Argument line 2: their Han origin embeds a frame: Both were written under or for the Han, the dynasty that had overthrown Qin. They absorb the moral template of Jia Yi's "The Faults of Qin": Qin won by Legalist force and fell for lack of benevolence. Episodes such as the burning of books (213 BC) reach us shaped by this frame, designed partly to legitimise Han rule.
Argument line 3: modern historians read the limitation critically: Derk Bodde (Cambridge History of China, 1986) built the standard narrative while flagging its dependence on Sima Qian. Yuri Pines (Birth of an Empire, 2014) argues the demonised image of Qin is largely a construct of hostile tradition. Mark Edward Lewis (The Early Chinese Empires, 2007) treats Qin and Han as one continuous imperial project rather than accepting the sharp Han moral break.
Argument line 4: archaeology limits the limitation: The terracotta army (1974) and the tomb mound reveal Qin's organisational scale; the Shuihudi (1975) and Liye (2002) Qin slips show a codified, bureaucratic law and administration rather than mere savagery; the Mawangdui Han tombs (1972 to 1974) preserve early-Han texts and material culture directly. This contemporary evidence lets historians test the histories rather than take them on trust.
Model paragraph: The decisive point is that the limitation is one of interpretation, not of basic fact. Sima Qian, writing around 91 BC under a dynasty with every reason to condemn its predecessor, hands us both a reliable factual spine, the dates, campaigns and institutions since confirmed where archaeology reaches them, and a hostile moral verdict inherited from Jia Yi. The Shuihudi and Liye slips, buried with working Qin officials, show a law that is detailed and procedural rather than capriciously savage; as Pines argues, once the Han frame is discounted the Qin looks less like a monster than an unusually efficient administrative state. The grand histories therefore limit how far we can trust their judgement of Qin and Han, but not our ability to reconstruct what those states actually did.
Judgement: To a significant but not disabling extent: the Han frame biases the interpretation of both Qin and Han and must be discounted, but the factual spine of the Shiji and Hanshu, read against contemporary archaeology and modern criticism, still allows a defensible reconstruction of the whole period.

Marker's note: markers reward a sustained answer to "to what extent," a clear distinction between the reliable factual spine and the hostile interpretive frame, and named historians (Bodde, Pines, Lewis) and archaeology (terracotta army, Shuihudi, Liye, Mawangdui) used to build the case rather than listed.