No. 237 Maritime Archaeology in the People's Republic of China ...

Bamboo rope
Rope was found in conjunction with the timber piece. It was
very waterlogged and fragile, but it was possible to discern
that the fibres were plaited to produce a thick cord. A sample
of this was recovered and is undergoing analysis at the Fujian
Provisional Museum.
Ceramics
The numbers and types of ceramic material collected from
the site are shown in Figure 20. Of the total number of whole
ceramic pieces recovered from the site 87.68% were black
bowls, 12.20 % were celadon bowls and 0.1% represents the
one complete stoneware jar.
bl a C k b o w l S
As indicated the predominant artefact type from Bai Jiao 1 is
the tuhao zhan or ‘rabbit’s fur’ glazed medium fired stoneware
(the Chinese archaeologists tend to refer to these ceramics as
porcelain) bowls. To simply provide a single description for
the type of black glazed bowls that were found on the wreck
site denies the subtle variations found among them. However,
a general description would include the following features:
small stoneware bowls, with a two stepped curved cavetto
with brown/black glaze on the rim area and a deeper black
green or black yellow cavetto: generally, 4–5 cm high and
10–11 cm wide. The glazes vary in thickness, but are mostly
thin glaze, and part of the clay matrix is often revealed on the
upper lip. The base was unglazed (Figure 21). The ‘rabbit’s
fur’ glaze (Figure 22) effect produced by iron oxides in the
glaze base occurs on many examples. Examples where the
glaze has crazed or not adhered to the body are shown in
Figure 23. This is perhaps a function of air circulation in the
step kiln, and the temperatures reached. Glaze colours are
however quite considerable in variation from greens through
to speckled browns, reds and yellows. The rough paste used for
these bowls has, in some cases caused the glaze to exhibit an
orange peel effect. All of the bowls have a low ring foot which
originated from the cake-shape foot. The potter has scrapped
the central part of the cake-shape foot when the paste was still
wet. The carved trace, with a small circular protruding eye in
the centre of the outside bottom, still remains.
The majority of the bowls recovered had a clay matrix
that was grey or light brown in colour. The more iron that is
included in the mud or clay results in the highly prized bowl
with a black clay matrix underneath the glaze. This type is
attributed to be the product of the Jian kiln. However, none
of the bowls found on the site were of the fine quality that is
expected from this kiln site. They are possibly from the Jiang
River kiln system perhaps the Fuqing kiln, or Nanyu or, Nanping
kiln sites (refer to later discussion on the chemical analysis
of the ceramics and the kiln systems of southeastern China).
This type of bowl is dated to the Southern Song (1128-1179)
and Yuan (1180-1368) dynasties.
There is two schools of thought as to the whether there
are one or two glazes used on each bowl. The lighter brown
colour found to underlie the much thicker black glaze is shown
in Figure 21. The author considers that one glaze has been
used and the lighter glazed sections observed are due to the
absorption of the glaze into the porous clay body. Where the
glaze is thick enough this absorption does not occur.
The 1990 excavation suggested a typology for the black
bowl that corresponds with the finds from 1995. This typology
was established through a visual reference of the ceramic
material (i.e. ‘eyeballed’) rather than measurement of each
of the bowls. This is the methodology employed by Chinese
archaeologists where large numbers of artefacts of a similar type
are excavated. The excavation report for 1990 concludes:
The pattern of the black glazed zhan are divided into three:
Type 1: the rim turned outwards, with curved belly and vertical
neck, unglazed bottom, some with hare’s hair streak [(Figure
24)];
Type 2: the rim and the neck are vertical and not an obvious curve
line between neck and belly with an unglazed bottom, some with
hare’s hair streak [(Figure 25)];
Type 3: the rim is turned outwards a little bit, and there is not
an obvious curved line between the neck and the curve of the
belly, the bottom is unglazed [(Figure 26)] (Yu Wei Chao et al.,
1992).
Stat i S t i C a l a n a lY S i S
Over 500 black bowls were measured for major dimensions
to ascertain the range of size, types and a correspondence to
location on the wreck site. This information could be used to
reveal further the nature of the cargo and the method of loading
the vessel. The dimensions included maximum width of the
mouth, width of the base, overall height of the bowl, thickness
of the base including the bulb and, height and thickness of
the foot. Figure 27 shows the variation in maximum diameter
or width of mouth for the black bowls, and Figure 28 shows
a similar analysis for the celadon A bowls (further discussed
below).
Po t t e r S m a r k
One bowl which was recovered from grid square 2G10 had
a potters mark inscribed or incised on the base (Figure 29).
The Chinese characters mean wang. A direct translation of
this word into English means ‘king’. The single character is
repeated three times and applied to the base inside the foot
and to the underside unglazed surface of the piece. The glaze
inside the bowl was black and had not properly adhered to
the body of the ceramic.
The Chinese translate the term ‘mark’ as kuan which can
be described as a seal, and in the case of large factories or
workshops this was pencilled on by a special writer. On very
fine pieces or at some of the smaller kiln sites the mark may
have been added by the same artists that applied the decoration
or turned the ceramic (Davidson, 1987:7). Two quite different
forms of script were historically used for the kuan. The Kaishu
script of the written Chinese language, and the more angular
seal script known as Zhuasan.
Apart from the types of script used, marks often vary
in the number of characters and colours used. The majority
of marks were either four or six characters long. Common
colours were either blue applied before glazing (underglaze)
or red enamel applied over the glaze. Black, gold and blue
were also used over the glaze. However, as the Bai Jiao 1
example indicates:
Marks on pottery were sometimes incised into the body or in
the case of certain specific porcelain wares, such as ‘tea dust’ or
‘robin’s egg’ glazed monochromes, either impressed in raised or
recessed form (Davidson, 1987:8).
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