Chapter 9 discusses outcome and process evaluations. After you have read this section of the Chapter answer the following:

Define both of these terms and discuss how they differ.
Provide a practical example of each type of evalution and how it would be employed in a real world application.

Investigative Intelligence- Chapter 9 Lecture Notes

EVALUATION CONCEPTS AND PRACTICE

Evaluation of attempts to control crime is generally forgotten in the rush to address the next big issue, but is essential if practitioners are to learn what works, and what doesnt to reduce crime.

a. What are we evaluating?

This is often the most difficult point for practitioners to grasp. Intelligenceled policing is a business model and as such can be largely successful when analysts interpret the criminal environment effectively, and use that intelligence to influence decisionmakers. If decisionmakers then choose an appropriate crime reduction strategy, but officers in the field fail to implement it correctly, does this mean that the business model of intelligenceled policing fails?

b. Types of evaluations

Outcome evaluations
tell you whether a crime reduction initiative worked or not. If not, a process evaluation
can often tell you why.

c. Operation Vendas and Operation Safe Streets

The process evaluation of Operation Vendas is immensely useful because it helps to show that the strategy may still be viable, but the implementation was flawed.

The Safe Streets evaluation by Lawton et al is quantitatively strong, but the moreprocess evaluation type writing of Giannetti helps to understand the actual street implementation of the policy across the whole city. Both evaluations work in tandem to provide a fuller picture of the operation.

d. Evaluation skills

Of all the analytical skills required for analysis, spatial statistics and crime mapping may be the most important for police analysts.

Spatial skills will have address perennial questions that come up about displacement of crime, and the impact of crime around criminogenic facilities such as bars and nightclubs.

The weighted displacement quotient helps address many of these questions.

e. Pure evaluations and realistic evaluations

Both scientific and scientific realist approached have merit in understanding the outcome of attempts to reduce crime and to better organize the flow of information and criminal intelligence around a police department.

These approaches to evaluation are not mutually exclusive.

f. Case study: Operation Anchorage

A degree of latitude is required to accept a fixed value for the societal impact of a residential or nonresidential burglary. Obviously each burglary is different in terms of the impact and cost of the crime, but the attempt by staff at the Australian Institute of Criminology to place a value based on aggregate impacts is still valuable.

per burglary = US $2,240

per residential burglary = US $1,800

per nonresidential burglary = US $4,200

during Anchorage = US $1.17m

benefit after Anchorage = US $5.5m

MEASURING SUCCESS IN DIFFERENT WAYS

a. The costbenefit of surveillance and confidential informants

The cost of informant handling is disputed, and centers along whether more abstract societal costs (impact on police legitimacy, for example) can be incorporated into a cost evaluation. Furthermore, the true costs of training officers, meeting time and so on are rarely factored into a cost estimate.

b. Measuring disruption

Disruption is poorly defined and loosely applied.

Some agencies take considerable liberties in how they apply disruption as a measure of their success. Others under value the importance of their activities.

The Disruption Attributes Tool is relatively new, and further details will becoming in the second edition of the book Strategic Thinking in Criminal Intelligence.

c. Measuring success in changing business practice

Hybrid governance is a relatively new term, but is a good description of where security governance is going.

In New Zealand, I found that assessing each component of the threei model was a good way to examine the health of intelligence processes in police departments.

d. Measuring success in performance indicators

Generally, the approach is often be careful what you wish for. By setting performance indicators, police executives can often drive commanders in ways that they never intended. This is especially the case with Compstat driving shortterm thinking about longterm crime problems.

SHOW MORE…

arthistory

due 10/14

Upon the move of the capital to Luoyi (Luoyang), the Zhou
controlled less of China than they had for most of the previ-
ous three hundred years. Instead, dozens of states rose, built
cities, and vied for power during the period known as Spring
and Autumn. Cast iron appeared in China around the eighth
century BCE, making metal weaponry easier to produce and
cheaper, in addition to the use of iron in agricultural imple-
ments.1 Bronze and jade technology became more sophisti-
cated, with inscriptions on bronze vessels remaining an impor-
tant source of information about the major historical figures
of the period and their states. Writings of this Classical Age
of Chinese thought provide information directly relevant to
architecture and ceremonies in and around it, and thousands
of tombs offer information about building technology as well
as objects that filled them.

Rulers Cities

Passages in texts of the early centuries CE have guided the
understanding of architectural remains dated from the
Western Zhou through the early Spring and Autumn period
in the region of central Shaanxi known as Zhouyuan, the
area that once belonged to the state of Qin, discussed in the
previous chapter. The phrase qian(you)chao, hou(you)qin, or in
front, audience hall; behind, private (or resting) chambers, a
reference to the placement of buildings in imperial settings,
is almost iconic:2 it was observed at Majiazhuang and is still
in place in the Forbidden City, where the Three Front Halls
were for audience and other court functions and the Back
Halls were for imperial residence; and when the empress held
audience in the Back Halls sector, she slept behind her hall
of audience. Her position behind the emperor was further
demonstration of the greater importance of a front building
or complex and lesser significance of architecture behind. The
idea that the more public space of a ruler is in front of where
he lives and sleeps is in evidence at every Chinese imperial city
from the third century onward and will be implemented in
tomb and cave-temple construction.

One passage from Kaogongji (Record examining trades or
crafts [including construction]), a section of the Zhouli (Rituals
of Zhou), has emerged as preeminent in writing about Chinese
cities. It is a prescription for Wangcheng (rulers city). Like the
rest of Kaogongji, the passage is believed to refer to Zhou
practices, even though the text survives probably from the

period of Western Han.3 Wangcheng is to be a square whose
four wall positions are determined by measuring out from a
midpoint according to the suns shadow. Each side of the wall
is 9 li, the number nine associated with fullness and perfection
and, by extension, with royalty. Major thoroughfares are to
cross the entirety of Wangcheng from wall to opposite wall.
The central thoroughfares, however, are blocked by the rulers
palace, positioned in its own walled enclosure. The palace faces
south with markets behind it, a temple to the rulers ancestors
on the east, and altars to soil and the five grains on the west
(figure 2.1).4 A civilization of archetypical images, ever aware
of and building on its past and at times resisting innovation,
Chinese imperial urbanism shows resonances of this idealized
plan through the rest of Chinas imperial history. Yet already in
the Eastern Zhou dynasty alternate arrangements of Chinese
rulers cities existed.

A key feature prescribed for Wangcheng persists: the pal-
ace-city, or gongcheng. Indicated in Shang and earlier capitals,
a designated, walled palace area is found in almost every Zhou
city where a ruler resided. The evidence is stronger in Eastern
Zhou than Western, for as mentioned above, once the Zhou
capital moved east, contenders for power increased, and with
time, the sizes of cities of those who prevailed increased as well.
The many Eastern Zhou cities divide into only four plans.

The city Wangcheng described in the Kaogongji is the
Zhou capital Luoyi, which was squarish, about 3 kilometers on
each side, and surrounded by a moat. A few building founda-
tions have been excavated, but not enough remains to confirm
that it followed the prescription for an ideal rulers city. Qufu,
in Shandong province, where Confucius was born in 551 BCE,
and Anyi in Shanxi are the closest Eastern Zhou examples to
the Wangcheng plan. The late Longshan city Guchengzhai,
mentioned in chapter 1, may have had this plan as well. Qufu,
capital of the state of Lu from the reign of King Cheng in the
eleventh century until conquest by the state of Chu in 249 BCE,
was surrounded by a rectangular wall with rounded corners
that measured about 3.7 kilometers east to west and 2.7 kilo-
meters north to south, all enclosed by a 30-meter-wide moat
(figure 2.2). The wall had eleven gates, two on the south side
and three on each other face. Ten major thoroughfares ran
through the city, five north-south and five east-west, each ema-
nating from a city gate or leading to an important building.
Large building foundations in an area of about 1,000 by 500
meters, roughly in the center of the outer wall, are believed

CHAPTER 2

Architecture of the First Emperor and His Predecessors

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21

ARCHITECTURE OF THE FIRST EMPEROR

to be from an enclosed palace-city. Three foundations on an
axial line are believed to have supported a gate, palatial hall,
and altar. That area was inside the confines of the Han-period
city wall, which shared its southern and western border with
part of the Zhou city but was outside a later wall that survives
in part today.5 The Eastern Zhou city at Anyi in Xia county
of southwestern Shanxi had much in common with the Lu
capital in Shandong. Both were oriented northeast-southwest.
Measuring 4.5 kilometers north-to-south and 2.1 kilometers
east-to-west, Anyis palace area was roughly in the center of
a much larger outer city. The Anyi city was last studied in the
early 1960s, so we do not have the kind of information available
for the capital of the Lu state. In the 1960s Anyi went by the
name Yuwangcheng, city of King Yu, Yuwang also the name of
the village where it was found.6

The second urban pattern of the Eastern Zhou period is
represented by Jiang, the capital of the state of Jin in Shanxi
province. Here the roughly rectangular outer city wall was 8.48
kilometers in perimeter, surrounded by a moat. The 1-kilo-
meter-square inner city was in the north center, sharing a
boundary with the north outer wall. A street of more than a
kilometer in length ran from the north wall through the inner
city and into the outer city.7

The third urban pattern is the most common among capi-
tals of large Zhou states: multiple walls that are not concentric.
Adjacent walled enclosures positioned north and south, east
and west, or at the corners of each other are among them, and
occasionally there are more than two walls. The state of Zhao,
in Handan in southern Hebei, flourished from 403 to 222 BCE.
The 1.888-square-kilometer site has archaeological remains
from the period of Spring and Autumn. That area became
an outer city when the Zhao moved its capital to Handan in
386 and constructed adjacent east and west cities south of it.
In this case, then, there are three adjacent walls (figure 2.3a).
In the palatial sector, the western enclosure is just under 1.4
meters on each side and contains the largest building plat-
form known from the later part of the Zhou dynasty. Almost
certainly the place identified in texts as Dragon Terrace, it
forms a roughly north-south line with two smaller building
platforms behind it. The eastern city to the south is 926 meters
east to west by 1.442 kilometers north to south. This wall is
2040 meters wide as opposed to 2030 meters for the western
wall. Here, too, three platforms form an axial line through the
city north to south. The older, northern city is 1.52 kilometers

north to south and approximately 1.4 kilometers east to west.
Only one foundation platform remains inside, suggesting it
may have been the palatial area of the Spring and Autumn city.
Another platform is directly opposite outside the northern
citys western wall, perhaps evidence that there was another
enclosure of the earlier city. Workshops have been excavated
outside the walls to the northwest.8 Handan is an example of

2.1. Illustration of Wangcheng, rulers city, from Nie Chongyi, Sanlitu
(Illustrated The three li (ritual) classics), part 1, juan 4/26, orig. 962

2.2. Wall of Qufu, capital of state of Lu, Shandong, second half of first
millennium !”#

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22

CHAPTER 2

a city where additional walls and growth continued when new
rulers conquered existing cities.

Xiadu, literally lower capital, of the Yan state in Yi county,
Hebei, just south of Beijing, is an example of an Eastern Zhou
city with adjacent walled areas that are further divided by a
canal (see figure 2.3b). Positioned between rivers to the north
and south, the 30-square-kilometer area stretched about 8
kilometers east to west by between 46 kilometers north to
south. The more developed part of the Yan capital was on the
east with an enclosed sector to its north. Remaining wall por-
tions are about 40 meters wide. A narrow sector at the north
is further divided from the rest of the eastern sector. Platform
foundation remains suggest this northern area was the location
of the palace. The number coincides with four terraces (tai)
named in Shuijingzhu (Commentary on the Waterways Classic), a
treatise perhaps written in the third century and annotated in
the early sixth century by Li Daoyuan (d. 527), which describes
137 waterways in China and, in the process, other features of
the landscape such as cities. The central and largest terrace, 140

by 110 meters and 11 meters high, is probably the foundation of
Wuyang Terrace.9 Bronze, iron, bone, and pottery workshops
are among the ruins of the eastern sector of Yan Xiadu, as are
places where bronze currency was cast. Cemeteries are found
in both cities.10

The capital of the state of Qi in Linzi, Shandong, which
flourished for more than six hundred years from 859 to 221
BCE, is one of the oldest examples of a city with adjacent walls.
Here the palace-city was in the southwestern corner of a much
larger walled area (see figure 2.3c). The rammed-earth outer
wall was 14 kilometers in perimeter and contained a popula-
tion of 210,000 households. Two gates provided access on the
north and south, and there was a single gate on the eastern and
western sides. The seven main roads through the city emanated
primarily from city gates; they were as wide as 20 meters. The
palace-city in the south, 1.5 by 2.5 kilometers, was enclosed by a
wall that at points was 60 meters wide. It, too, had main roads
passing through wall gates. A platform of 14 meters in height
and 86 meters north to south known as Duke Huan Platform

2.3. Plans of three multiwalled cities of the Eastern Zhou period
a. Handan, capital of Zhao, Hebei; b. Xiadu, capital of Yan, Hebei; c. Linzi,
capital of Qi, Shandong

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23

ARCHITECTURE OF THE FIRST EMPEROR

was in the northeast. It was probably the main palace sector
through the citys Zhou history. A drainage system ran beneath
both walled enclosures, and pottery, bronze, iron, and bone
workshops were found, as well as a mint. Two large cemeteries
also were excavated within the city. The cemetery of the later
rulers of Qi is about 10 kilometers outside the city walls.11

Xintian, capital of the state of Jin in Houma, southern
Shanxi province, flourished from 585 to 376 BCE. It is better
evidence than Handan of continued occupation and growth
on a preexisting city site. By the end of the twentieth century,
seven walled enclosures, four of which shared space, had been
uncovered in an area that was 4.7 square kilometers. Large,
rammed-earthen foundations amid smaller ones were found
in two of the enclosures, suggesting palatial halls. The capital
of the state of Zheng, which became the capital of the state
of Han in 375 BCE in Xinzheng, Henan province, was a city
of about 20 square kilometers with two adjacent walls; its
small palace area, only 500 by 320 meters in extent, was in the
western walled section. The eastern city was not significantly
larger than the western one, but it may have served as an outer
city. The Xinzheng capital had several bronze foundries and is
the source of important bronze hoards that included musical
instruments.12

The fourth type of Eastern Zhou city had a single wall with
a palace sector inside it. Ying, the capital of the state of Chu
just outside Jinan in Jiangling, Hubei province, today is an
example. It was founded in 689. Contained in walls that were
as thick as 40 meters at the base and tapered to 1014 meters,
and 4.45 by 3.588 kilometers in perimeter, the north and south
city walls had sluice gates that have been theoretically recon-
structed as shown in figure 2.4. Eighty-four palatial founda-
tions and more than thirty cemeteries with more than eight
hundred mounded tombs have been identified.13

Hundreds of states vied for power in the Spring and Autumn
period.14 No name could more aptly describe the 250 years that
followed than Warring States. By the mid-third century BCE,
only seven survived. The above-mentioned Qi, Yan, Zhao, Han,
and Chu were among them. The others were Wei and Qin.
The capitals of each of these states and the many of the first
millennium BCE that did not endure until the third century
had markets. The Kaogongji passage about Wangcheng states
that a market was part of every rulers city. Several other texts
of the period reinforce the role of commerce in later Zhou
cities. Bamboo slips excavated in a tomb in Linyi, Shandong

province, in 1972 contain sections of a document known as
Shifa (Rules about markets). According to Shifa, markets were
administered by officials, specific products were sold in pre-
scribed locations, and misconduct in the marketplace was pun-
ished.15 The text Zuozhuan (Zuo commentary) informs us that
market officials were on duty in the preWarring States period
of Eastern Zhou. The third-century-BCE official Xunzi wrote
that in the earlier part of Eastern Zhou, market directors were
largely responsible for maintenance, cleaning, traffic flow,
security, and price control, and in later Eastern Zhou they
expanded to merchandise inspection, settlement of disputes,
loans, and tax collection for sales, property, and imported
goods.16 One also learns from texts that each state market
had its own name. Whether Eastern Zhou states functioned as
city-states according to the definition used for those of ancient
Greece is debated.17

Archaeological evidence informs us about other aspects of
commerce in and among Warring States cities. Seals that name
officials in charge of state-controlled minting of coins and
foundries for bronze weapons and vessels are almost invariably
found in the vicinity of palaces, suggesting that these indus-
tries were tightly controlled by the state ruler. Workshops for
goods such as farming tools and pottery usually were farther
from palaces, perhaps suggesting less government control of
manufacturing, sales, or distribution. More than thirty thou-
sand coins uncovered at Yan Xiadu suggest that currency was
an important commodity. An early-fourth-century massacre
in this city has led to the theory that the urban population
increased dramatically and posed a challenge to royal control
of the citys goods and production, and that the mass murder
was an assertion of power by the ruler to regain control of his
state.18 Other archaeological evidence suggests that warfare
was not only inter- and intracity but between Chinese states
and nomads at Chinas northern frontier. Gold objects made
almost certainly by northern nomadic populations have been

2.4. Reconstruction of section of sluice gate, south wall of Ying, capital of
Chu state, Jiangling, Hubei, 689278 !”#

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ARCHITECTURE OF THE FIRST EMPEROR

found in Warring States period tombs. Entwined animals are
prevalent among the gold, and interlace patterns and inlay,
all characteristic of the art of peoples including the Scythians
known as Animal Style, dominate Chinese bronze vessels of
the Warring States period.

Rulers Tombs

Our knowledge of these vessels comes from tombs, most of
them belonging to Eastern Zhou kings or princes. Royalty were
interred in lingyuan, royal funerary precincts, spacious grounds
that included architecture of the ruler, family members, often
those close to him in life such as officials, and sometimes
servants or slaves, as well as aboveground architecture for
sacrifices and additional land that kept the tomb area isolated
from a nearby city of the living. This practice would continue
through the Han dynasty. Nonnobles also had cemeteries, as did
lineages. The size and structure of the tomb, number of coffins,
numbers and kinds of bronze vessels, and presence of objects
such as instruments were prescribed in texts and determined
by rank. More than a dozen royal tombs or cemeteries of the
Warring States period have been excavated. Here we highlight
those with important architectural features or objects that
provide unique information about architecture.

Chu, the largest state during the Spring and Autumn and
Warring States periods, has yielded more than five thousand
tombs. The above-mentioned Chu capital city in Jinan, Hubei,
had sluice gates (see figure 2.4), and in Baoshan and Jingzhou,
both in Hubei, and elsewhere, Chu built royal tombs (figure
2.5). The single approach ramp, stepped sides, and coffin pit
at the center are simplified compared to tombs of the late
Shang rulers in Anyang (see figure 1.11). The tomb of Marquis
Yi of Zeng, a name on objects in his tomb but perhaps a
man whose name was different in historical records, in Sui
county of Hubei, who died in 433 BCE, was divided into four
compartments, each lined with wooden planks and each con-
nected to adjacent sections by tunnels.19 This pit tomb with
no approach ramp had space between rooms and between the
burial and ground level that was sealed by charcoal and other
materials. Although this tomb is best known for the set of
sixty-five bronze bells weighing about two-and-a-half tons, it

also reveals three important features of Eastern Zhou archi-
tecture. First, the contents and purpose of the compartments
are differentiated: the main chamber contained the marquiss
and eight other coffins, the latter all female sacrificial burials,
as well as the coffin of a dog; a room with thirteen coffins
is on the opposite side of the main chamber; between them
and to the north were burial goods. Second are the plank
walls, which are used in other tombs of the period such as
one excavated in Xinyang, Henan.20 Third are windows. We
have seen doors that open outward in a bronze vessel of the
early Zhou period (see figure 1.15). Doors are painted on the
outer of two lacquered wooden coffins of the marquis, and
windows divided into four panes are painted on the inner
sarcophagus (figure 2.6). The window might be compared to
the representation of windows or other light sources in tombs
of ancient Egyptian royalty, symbolically providing a view to
the world outside.

One of the most important artifacts for the study of
Eastern Zhou architecture was excavated in a cemetery of the
Zhongshan kingdom in Pingshan county of Hebei province.
King Cuo (r. 327313 BCE) and his wife and concubines were
buried beneath truncated pyramidal mounds, his being 100.5
by 90 meters at the base and 18 meters square at the top. A
funerary hall was on top of the mound. Again we see continu-
ation of a much earlier practice: a funerary temple was on top
of the tomb of Lady Hao at the last Shang capital in Anyang.
Also following precedents from Yin are approach ramps to
King Cuos subterranean chamber from the north and south,
with the primary burial in a pit at the center, similar to the
structure of the Chu tomb at Baoshan as well (see figures 1.11,
2.5). Horse and chariot pits, treasuries, sacrificial burials, and a
pit for a boat were all part of the universe created underground
for King Cuo. Here, too, one readily draws comparisons with
ancient Egyptian practices that included the burial of boats
that would have made passage through the dark, watery under-
world possible.

2.5. Two Chu tombs, Juliandun, Baoshan, vicinity of Jinan, Jingzhou, Hubei,
period of Chu state

2.6. Reconstruction of inner co!in, tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, Leigudun,
Sui county, Hubei, ca. 433 “#$

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26

CHAPTER 2

The object is a bronze plate of 94 by 48 centimeters and
about 1 centimeter in thickness. A plan of the burial precinct
is inlaid with gold. The representation of three-dimensional
space in two dimensions is extraordinary anywhere in the
world in the third century BCE, and the use of scale is more
amazing. Distinctions in line thickness suggest that different
kinds of lines had different meanings for builders. Breaks in
lines indicate gates. Inscribed notations are as extraordinary
as the plaque itself. Building sizes and distances between
buildings and walls are provided. They are given in chi, a
unit of measure similar in usage to the English word foot,
and whose specific length changes through Chinese history,
and in bu, paces, even more similar to foot. South is at the
top of the diagram, where it would be for most of the rest
of Chinas premodern cartographic history. Archaeologists
have named the diagram zhaoyutu, image of the omen ter-
ritory, zhao, or omen, presumably a reference to the funerary
world (figure 2.7).21

Perhaps even more important than the scaled and labeled
plan is the forty-two-character directive on the plate that
there be two copies, one to be kept in the palace and this sec-
ond one to be buried with the ruler. The purpose was so that
future generations would know how to construct a tomb in
the manner of their ancestors, and by inference, the under-
standing that the patterns of antiquity were to be followed
or, more explicitly, that the intent of royal architecture was
to model itself after its past and to be continued in the same
manner in the future.

The tomb of Yun Chang, the king of Yue on Mount Yin,
Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, was part of a moat-surrounded
cemetery of approximately 85,000 square meters. It had an
underground chamber that was triangular in section. The
tomb, 46 by 1419 meters at the base and 14 meters into the
surface of the mountain, was lined with wooden slabs and
sealed with charcoal in the manner of the tomb of Marquis Yi
of Zeng. The subterranean space, 34.8 meters long, 6.5 meters
wide, and 5.6 meters high, was divided into three rooms. Burial
was inside a 6.5-meter-long tree trunk that had been cut in half
(figure 2.8).22

As for other tombs of the Warring States period, tombs
of the state of Jin are in southern Shanxi and seem to divide
according to the lineage of the deceased; south-facing tombs of
the state of Wei in Hui county, Shanxi, have funerary temples
on top of mounds; mounded tombs believed to belong to Zhao

2.7. Zhaoyutu (plan of the omen territory), 94 by 48 by 1 cm, ca. 313 !”#,
excavated in tomb of King Cuo of the Zhongshan kingdom, Pingshan, Hebei.
Hebei Provincial Museum

2.8. Tomb of Yun Chang, king of Yue state, Yinshan, Shaoxing, Zhejiang,
Hebei, ca. 500 !”#

2.9. Drawing of bronze pole showing balustrades, cantilever corner
brackets, and hipped-roof with bird and dragon ornaments at the top and
drawing of its four sides, excavated at Xiadu, capital of the Yan state, Hebei,
Warring States period

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ARCHITECTURE OF THE FIRST EMPEROR

royalty are in the vicinity of Handan; the royal cemetery of Qi
is in the vicinity of Linzi; and the royal cemetery of Yan is near
Xiadu. Seventeen log coffins, some carved into the shapes of
boats, excavated in a pit tomb of 30 by 21 meters at the base in
Chengdu, were part of a royal cemetery of the state of Shu.23

Excavated objects of the Warring States period may inform
us about architectural details of the period. A bronze pole
divided into three registers supports a one-bay-square roofed
structure (figure 2.9). Like bronze vessels of the Western Zhou
dynasty, it shows the use of balustrades (see figure 1.15). The
five-ridge roof has a dragon on each side ridge and winged
creatures at the ends of the main ridge. Similar creatures join
cantilevers to the undersides of the roof to help support it.
Animals on roof ridges and cantilevered bracketing will be
standard in Chinese construction through the nineteenth
century. A building engraved on a bronze mirror excavated in

Zhaogu village, Huixian, Henan, is even more informative. The
structure is supported on a high foundation, with two stories
above it. Theoretically reconstructed as it appears in figure
2.10, this depiction combined with excavations of architecture
and literary descriptions are the basis for reconstructions of
architecture through the end of the first millennium BCE.24

Architecture of Chinas First Empire

Between 230 and 221 BCE, the remaining six warring states
fell to Prince Zheng (259210 BCE) of the state of Qin, who
declared himself Shi Huangdi, Primordial August Thearch,
and founded the Qin dynasty (221206 BCE) in 221; he is often
referred to as the First Emperor. Although his own dynasty
endured a mere fifteen years, building principles observed in
Qin were much older and endured much longer. The rendering

2.10. Sectional drawing and reconstruction of
multilevel, pillar-supported structure incised on
bronze vessel, excavated in Zhaogu village, Hui
county, Henan, Warring States period

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28

CHAPTER 2

of cartographic space, for example, seen on the bronze plate
from the tomb of King Cuo of Zhongshan (see figure 2.7), is
evident on pine boards excavated in Tianshui, Gansu province,
and dated 239 BCE.25

From 677 to 383 BCE, the state of Qin was centered in
the above-mentioned region Zhouyuan, which included the
modern cities Qishan, Fufeng, and Fengxiang, the locations
of building complexes and perhaps ancestral temples in the
Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (see figures
1.12, 1.13). This part of Shaanxi also contained enormous ducal
tombs of the kind constructed across China in the middle of
the last millennium BCE. A 21-square-kilometer necropolis
with some thirteen tomb areas, each with one or two main
tombs, includes the seventh-century BCE tomb of Duke Mu
and the largest burial of the Spring and Autumn period, possi-
bly the tomb of Duke Jing (r. 576537); it is 5,334 square meters
in area. Tombs believed to be royal are approached by long
ramps from two sides like those in Anyang and King Cuos
tomb in the Zhongshan necropolis. Many of the tombs were
enclosed by moats, some by double moats, and some by dry
moats, perimeters dug as if to contain water. There is no evi-
dence of mounds above the Qin state tombs.

In 383 the Qin state moved its capital farther north in
Shaanxi to Liyang in Lintong county, near the site that would
become the capital of the Qin dynasty. Roof tiles, indications
of streets, and wall pieces confirm its thirty-four-year exis-
tence.26 Cruciform-shaped graves in Lintong are believed to
belong to fourth-century BCE Qin dukes. They are different
from the Qin state tombs in western Shaanxi in an impor-
tant way: funerary temples were on top of the earlier tombs,
whereas the fourth-century burials were covered with mounds
and funerary temples were nearby.

Initially Prince Zheng resided in palaces that remained from
the Qin capital of the Warring States period. Following unifi-
cation of the states in 221 BCE, he built new, larger palaces on
new sites. The Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) tells us that
the First Emperor had three hundred palaces with another four
hundred outside the palace-city walls.27 What these numbers
refer to depends on how one defines palace, for as explained in
the introduction, the character gong, translated as palace, can
refer to one courtyard or more than twenty that are interre-
lated in a complex of palatial buildings. The outer boundaries
of Qin Shi Huangdis capital also are vague: different from the
dictum in Kaogongji that stipulates a ruler should build the

square outer wall of his city and then construct palaces, altars,
and markets inside it, the First Emperor constructed his pal-
aces before he walled his capital, and the short duration of his
dynasty is the likely reason the outer wall was never completed.
The city was approximately 7.2 kilometers east-to-west by 6.7
kilometers north-to-south, with its northern boundary along
the Wei River.

By the early twenty-first century, foundations of four build-
ing groups had been excavated. Evidence is strong that the
first of them, known as palace 1, had at its core a two-story
structure with seven rooms on the first floor and five upstairs,
and with a central pillar extending from the ground to the
upper-story ceiling.28 Palace 2 is northwest of palace 1, and
about the same size, but in a poorer state of preservation.
Palace 3, the largest so far, was also two stories and was con-
nected to palaces 1 and 2 by covered arcades. Its lower story
had eleven rooms. Murals done in mineral pigments remain
in palace 3. Subjects include acrobats, horses, animals, floral
motifs, geometric patterns, and architecture. The architectural
elements are especially interesting. Features such as tie-beams
are painted along the upper walls where they would be found
in an actual building. The paintings anticipate a broader-based
imitation of architectural elements in relief sculpture or paint
in later time that is known as fangmugou, imitation of the
timber frame. Carbon-14 testing on wood from palace 3 dates
it to the midWarring States period, suggesting that painting
and refurbishing probably occurred during the Qin, but older
building parts were reused.

In addition, excavators believe they have found some of the
palaces the emperor is reported to have built in imitation of
those of each of the final six states as he toppled them during
his unification of China. Pottery tiles with the names of several
of the states have been uncovered on either side of palace 3.
Qin Shi Huangdis greatest achievement in palatial architec-
ture was to be Epang Palace, immortalized in the Records of the
Grand Historian as a project for which the emperor conscripted
more than 700,000 laborers and which, when it was destroyed
by the armies of the man who would found the Han dynasty,
burned for several months.29 The remains of Epang Palace are
about 15 kilometers west of Xian in the vicinity of the Western
Zhou capital Hao.

The concept of a traveling palace (xinggong) also blossomed
under the First Emperor. The palatial residences in and around
the capital were a means of decoy for the ruler, information

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29

ARCHITECTURE OF THE FIRST EMPEROR

about whose specific whereabouts at a given time could be
punishable by death. Qin Shi Huangdi also used traveling
palaces in the manner they would be used by emperors for the
rest of Chinese imperial history: he made inspection tours of
his empire to demonstrate and consolidate his power, inscrib-
ing rocks and building residences at sacred and strategic sites
en route.30 He no doubt traveled on plank roads that had been
built in the Warring States period. Parts of one of these roads
between Xianyang and Sichuan province in the West remain
today. Rocks and palace architecture survive at Jieshi on the
coast of the Bohai Sea in Liaoning, the xinggong most distant
from the capit