JIANGXI PROVINCE, CHINA—According to a Gizmodo report, some 6,000 pieces of fish-scale armor from the tomb of Liu He, the Marquis of Haihun, have been analyzed and restored over the past two years. The Marquis ruled as emperor of the Western Han Dynasty for just 27 days in 74 B.C. The armor scales were found in the tomb’s armory room, along with knives and swords. Traces of lacquer suggest that the armor had been packed in a decorative box. “The Haihun Hou Tomb had been through earthquakes and rising groundwater levels to the expansion of the Poyang Lake area, so the armor fragments were in a fragile state,” said Yang Jun of the Jiangxi Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology. Bai Rongjin of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said that the armor was made of iron, copper, and leather, noting that armor crafted during the Han Dynasty was usually made of just one material. The scales of the marquis’ armor were also smaller than those usually found in armor from the period, he added, and therefore would have required greater skill to construct it. To read about more than 400 sacrificed animals buried near a Western Han Dynasty tomb complex, go to "Imperial Menagerie," one of ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 Discoveries of 2023.
