A Study of Chinese and Japanese Porcelains from Archaeological Sites of Mexico City, Using INAA
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5433/1679-0375.2024.v45.50614Keywords:
chinese porcelains, japanese porcelain, INAA, statistical analysisAbstract
This study analyzes porcelain fragments unearthed at multiple archaeological sites in Mexico City, formerly known as New Spain. A collection of 60 samples was successfully categorized into four different groups and analyzed based on the Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) in conjunction with statistical methods. One of the groups included blue-and-white porcelains, which conclusively traced back to the renowned Jingdezhen kilns. Another blue-and-white group was attributed to the Zhangzhou kilns. Notably, it was determined that the Chinese white porcelains, distinguished by their low iron content, originated from the Dehua kilns. In contrast to Chinese porcelain, a separate category was identified as Japanese porcelain, which displayed distinct chemical signatures. These Japanese pieces were probably sourced from the Arita kilns. The origin of the two porcelain bodies remained elusive and undetermined throughout our analysis. The chemical analysis of archaeological specimens provides invaluable data on their identity and provenance. Therefore, the findings presented here offer compelling evidence of extensive trade, cultural, and social connections between China, Japan, the Philippines, and Mexico City during the Viceroyalty period facilitated by La Nao de La China (The China Ships).
References
Byungsun, B. (1999). White Porcelain Production Techniques in the Late Chosǒn Dynasty. Korea Journal, 39, 249-287.
Carrera Stampa, M. (1959). La Nao de la China. Historia Mexicana, 9(1), 97-118. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25134990
Cheng, H. S., Zhang, Z. Q., Xia, H. N., Jiang, J. C. & Yang, F. J. (2002). Non-destructive analysis and appraisal of ancient Chinese porcelain by PIXE. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms, 190(1/4), 488-491.
Cheng, L., Feng, X-q., Feng, S-l., Cheng, H-s., Jaksicc, M., Fan, Ch-S. & Zhang, W-J. (2004). PIXE Analysis of Ancient Chinese Porcelain of Hutian Kiln. In Proceedings. 10th International Conference on Particle-Induced X-ray Emission and its Analytical Applications PIXE, Portorož, Slovenia.
Curiel Méndez, G. (2013). De primores curiosidades y maravillas del Oriente. In A. Fernández Torres, & A. Sánchez de Mora (Coords.), Pacífico, España y la aventura de la Mar del Sur: Archivo General de Indias (pp. 275-293). Acción Cultural Española.
Dias, M. I., Prudêncio, M. I., De Matos, M. P., & Rodrigues, A. L. (2013). Tracing the origin of blue and white Chinese Porcelain ordered for the Portuguese market during the Ming dynasty using INAA. Journal of Archaeological Science, 40(7), 3046-3057.
Dillon, M., (2008). Transport and marketing in the development of the Jingdezhen porcelain industry during the Ming and Qing dynasties. In M. Dillon (Org.), Chinese Economic History up to 1949 (Vol. 1, pp. 540-552).
Fischer, C. & Hsieh. E., (2017). Export Chinese blue-and-white porcelain: compositional analysis and sourcing using non-invasive portable XRF and reflectance spectroscopy. Journal of Archaeological Science, 80, 14-26.
Fournier, P. (1990). Evidencias Arqueológicas de la Importación de Cerámica en México, con Base en los Materiales del Ex-convento de San Jerónimo. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.
Fournier, P., & Junco Sanchez, R. (2019). Archaeological Distribution of Chinese Porcelain in Mexico. In C. Wu, R. Junco Sanchez, & M. Liu (Eds.). Archaeology of Manila Galleon Seaports and Early Maritime Globalization (pp. 215-237). Springer.
Fournier, P. & Otis Charlton, C. (2015). De China a la cuenca de México: consumo suntuario de porcelanas de las dinastías Ming y Qing en ranchos y haciendas del área de Otumba. In L. Chen, & A. S. García, (Eds.), La Nueva Nao: De Formosa a América Latina: Reflexiones en torno a la globalización desde la era de la navegación hasta la actualidad (pp. 31-42). Universidad de Tamkang.
Glascock, M., Nabelek, P., Weinrich, D., & Coveney, R. (1986). Correcting for uranium fission in instrumental neutron activation analysis of high-uranium rocks. Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry, 99, 121-131.
Glascock, M. D. (2021). MURRAP User Guide. https://archaeometry.missouri.edu/downloads/MURRAP_User_Guide.pdf
Guerrero-Rivero, S., Tenorio, D., Jiménez-Reyes, M., Junco-Sánchez, R., & López-Reyes, M. C. (2020). Commercial interaction at the port of Acapulco, Mexico, during the Viceregal period: A provenance study of ceramic containers and regional wares. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 29, 1-14.
Hsieh, E. & Fischer, C. (2019). Japanese or Chinese? Non-invasive analysis of East Asian blue-and-white porcelain. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 11, 5483-5497.
Juan, W., Leung, P. L., & Jiazhi L. (2007). A study of the composition of Chinese blue and white porcelain. Studies in Conservation, 52(3), 188-198. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20619501
Junco, R., & Fournier, P. (2008). Del celeste imperio a la Nueva España: importación distribución y consumo de la loza de la China del periodo Ming Tardío en el México virreinal. In L. Chen, & A. Saladino García (Eds.), La nueva Nao: de Formosa a América Latina: intercambios culturales, económicos y políticos entre vecinos distantes, (pp. 3-22). Universidad de Tamkang,
Katsuki, H., Chang, K. H., Kang, M. H., Lee, W. J., Lee, J. H., Kim, U. S., Han, K. S.; Kim, J. H., Cho, W. S. & Hwang, K. T. (2019). Comparative study on old white porcelains produced in Gwangju (Korea) and Arita (Japan) in the 15th to 19th centuries. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 27, 1-8.
Kerr, R. & Ayers, J. (2002). Blanc de Chine: History and Connoisseurship Reviewed. Routledge.
Kuwayama, G. (1987). Chinese Ceramics in Colonial Mexico. University of Hawaii Press.
Leung, P. L. & Luo, H. A. (2000). Study of provenance and dating of ancient Chinese porcelain by x‐ray fluorescence spectrometry. X-Ray Spectrometry, 29(1), 34-38.
Leung, P. L., Peng, Z. C., Stokes, M. J., & Li, M. T. (2000). EDXRF studies of porcelains (800–1600 AD) from Fujian China with chemical proxies and principal component analysis. X-Ray Spectrometry, 29(3), 253-259.
Li, L., Huang, Y., Sun, H. Y., Yan, L. T., Feng, S. L., Xu, Q., & Feng, Q. X. (2016). Study on the property of the production for Fengdongyan kiln in Early Ming dynasty by INAA and EDXRF. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms, 381, 52-57.
Li, W, Luo, H., Li, J., Lu, X., & Guo, J. (2011a). The white porcelains from Dehua kiln site of China: Part I Chemical compositions and the evolution regularity. Ceramics International, 37(1), 355-361.
Li, W, Luo, H., Li, J., Lu, X., & Guo, J. (2011b). The white porcelains from Dehua kiln site of China. Part II: Microstructure and its physicochemical basis. Ceramics International, 37(2), 651-658.
Ma, H., Zhu, J., Henderson, J., & Li, N. (2012). Provenance of Zhangzhou export blue-and-white and its clay source. Journal of Archaeological Science, 39(5), 1218-1226.
Mejia, J. & Mejia, J. (2022). The economics of the Manila Galleon. Journal of Chinese Economic and Foreign Trade Studies, 15(1), 35-62.
Min, L. (2013). Fragments of globalization: Archaeological porcelain and the early colonial dynamics in the Philippines. Asian Perspectives 52(1), 43-74.
Nagatake, T. (2003). Classic Japanese Porcelain: Imari and Kakiemon. Kodansha International.
Niziolek, L. C. A. (2015). A compositional study of a selection of Song dynasty Chinese ceramics from the Java Sea Shipwreck: Results from LA-ICP-MS analysis. Journal of Indo-Pacific Archaeology, 35, 48-66.
Priyadarshini, M. (2018). Chinese porcelain in colonial Mexico: the material worlds of an early modern trade. Springer Nature Switzerland.
Ribeiro Jr., I. S., Genezini, F. A., Saiki, M., & Zahn, G. S. (2013). Determination of uranium fission interference factors for INAA. Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry, 296, 759-
Shakhashiro, A., Trinkl, A., Törvenyi, A., Zeiller, E., Benesch, T., Sansone, U. (2006). Report on the IAEA-CU-2006-06 proficiency test on the Determination of Major Minor and Trace Elements in Ancient Chinese Ceramic. International Atomic Energy Agency. https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/42/016/42016123.pdf
Sterba, J. H., Mommsen, H., Steinhauser, G., & Bichler, M. (2009). The influence of different tempers on the composition of pottery. Journal of Archaeological Science, 36(7), 1582-1589.
Takenori, N. & Terreros-Espinosa, E. (2020b). Ceramics in Guadalajara Mexico. Journal of Global Humanities and Social Sciences, 6, 141-154. http://hdl.handle.net/10069/39848
Takenori, N. & Terreros-Espinosa, E. (2020a). Imari Porcelain Crossing the Pacific Ocean. Newsletter The Oriental Ceramic Society, 28, 50-51. https://www.orientalceramicsociety.org.uk/publications/newsletter
Terreros-Espinosa, E. & Moctezuma, E. M. (2003). Excavaciones en el predio de Donceles 97 del centro histórico de la Ciudad de México In E. Matos Moctezuma (Coord.), Excavaciones del Programa de Arqueología Urbana (pp. 239-255). Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.
Terreros-Espinosa, E., Tenorio, D., & Jiménez-Reyes, M. (2021a). Botijas y peruleras en la Ciudad de México Colonial: Un estudio arqueométrico. SPAL, 30(2), 340-355.
Terreros-Espinosa, E., Tenorio, D., & Jiménez-Reyes, M. (2021b). Pre-hispanic pottery from the Zoque area of Tabasco, Mexico: Provenance implications. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 35, 1-16.
Tian, Ch. (2020). Porcelanas chinas de la Dinastía Qing (1644 -1912) en la colección Federico Torralba (Museo de Zaragoza) Master Universitario en Estudios Avanzados en Historia del Arte. Universidad de Zaragoza.
Tripati, S., Parthiban, G., Pattan, & J. N., Menezes, A. (2017). Chemical composition and provenance of Chinese porcelain shards recovered from Old Goa, west coast of India. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports,14, 467-478.
Wu, J., Leung, P. L., Li, J. Z., Stokes, M. J., & Li, M. T. (2000). EDXRF studies on blue and white Chinese Jingdezhen porcelain samples from the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. X‐Ray Spectrometry, 29(3), 239-244.
Xie, G., Feng, S., Feng, X., Li, Y., Han, H., Wang, Y., Zhu J., Yan L., Li, L. (2009). Study on the elemental features of ancient Chinese white porcelain at Jingdezhen by INAA. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms, 267(5), 821-824.
Zhou, Y., Wang, K., Jin, Y., Sun, J., Cui, Y., Hu, D. (2019). Chemical and microstructural comparison of the export porcelain from five different kilns excavated from Nanhai I shipwreck. Ceramics International, 45(10), 12880-12887.
Zhu, J., Ma, H., Li, N., Henderson, J., & Glascock, M. D. (2016). The provenance of export porcelain from the Nan'ao One shipwreck in the South China Sea. Antiquity, 90(351), 798-808.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Dolores Tenorio, Melania Jimenez-Reyes, Eladio Terreros-Espinosa, Socorro DE La Vega Doria
![Creative Commons License](http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/88x31.png)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
The Copyright Declaration for articles published in this journal is the author’s right. Since manuscripts are published in an open access Journal, they are free to use, with their own attributions, in educational and non-commercial applications. The Journal has the right to make, in the original document, changes regarding linguistic norms, orthography, and grammar, with the purpose of ensuring the standard norms of the language and the credibility of the Journal. It will, however, respect the writing style of the authors. When necessary, conceptual changes, corrections, or suggestions will be forwarded to the authors. In such cases, the manuscript shall be subjected to a new evaluation after revision. Responsibility for the opinions expressed in the manuscripts lies entirely with the authors.
This journal is licensed with a license Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.