据秦始皇帝陵博物院消息，最近关于秦兵马俑表面指纹的研究有了最新发现。话题＃秦始皇兵马俑上发现女性指纹＃冲上热搜第一。
Fingerprints preserved in the clay of China's Terracotta Warriors suggest that women and children were among the artisans who produced the 2,200-year-old figures, challenging the long-held assumption that the work was done exclusively by adult men.
这项研究来自秦始皇帝陵博物院和山东大学考古学院合作的一项研究，近日发表在国际期刊《文化遗产杂志》上。
秦兵马俑制作者的人口学构成（年龄、性别）长期以来是秦代手工业组织研究中的一个关键问题。
一个长期流行的假设是：秦俑的大规模标准化生产由成年男性工匠承担。
Researchers from Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum in Xi'an and Shandong University analyzed 79 well-preserved fingerprints on 36 warriors from Unit T23 in Pit 1. Their study, published in the Journal of Cultural Heritage, used a Bayesian mixture model to estimate the demographic makeup of the workforce.
但最新的研究成果提供了一个全新的思路。秦俑在制作过程中，工匠手指直接按压于未干陶胎，无意间在头部、铠甲、手臂等部位留下了指纹印痕。
研究团队提取了秦始皇帝陵博物院一号坑T23探方23件陶俑上保存的指纹印痕，共获得79枚独立指纹样本，并引入近年来提出的指纹贝叶斯混合模型研究方法，从群体层面对指纹的年龄与性别结构进行推测。
研究发现这些指纹中，成年男性约占45%，成年女性约占32.7%，15岁以下少年约占22.3%。
The model attributed about 45 percent of the prints to adult men, 32.7 percent to adult women and 22.3 percent to juveniles under 15 — an age cutoff drawn from Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) legal texts that defined responsibility by age.
这是学界首次以量化的生物学证据表明，秦俑生产以成年男性为主，但并非由成年男性单独完成，女性与少年可能也参与了俑体制作、搬运或组装等工序。
The findings, described by the authors as "the first quantitative biological evidence for a diverse workforce including women and children", directly contradict the traditional view that large-scale craft production under the Qin relied solely on adult male labor.
另外，79枚指纹在俑体上的位置分布为：头部28枚（35.4%）、铠甲部位27枚（34.2%）、手臂16枚（20.3%）、手部4枚（5.1%）、领甲3枚（3.8%）、足部1枚（1.3%）。
The prints were found on the warriors' heads, arms, armor, hands, collars and feet, apparently left unintentionally as workers shaped, molded and assembled the clay.
指纹按其形成机制可分为两类：
表面指纹73枚，系工匠在塑造、修整湿胎过程中直接按压形成；
浮雕指纹6枚，系甲钉、腰带等预制成型泥饰粘贴时由握持动作形成。指纹在头、臂、铠甲等分体预制部件上的集中分布，这也与已知的“模塑结合、分件组装”生产模式相互印证。
从年龄结构看，成年男性指纹的年龄峰值约为20岁，成年女性指纹的年龄分布呈右偏态，峰值亦集中于青年阶段；未成年人指纹占比达22.3%，与秦代学徒制度下青少年随工匠辅助作业的历史记载相符。
The authors suggest that younger workers may have been apprentices assigned simpler tasks, such as attaching decorative rivets to armor, a practice consistent with Qin legal texts describing a formal apprenticeship system and with historical records of women and children working in state-run workshops.
