Saturday, June 22, 2024

Porcelain Wrecks

Chinese archaeologists have reported two Ming dynasty shipwrecks off Hainan Island in southern China. It always amazes me to see such a huge mass of valuable procelain.


Love the way the outline of this ship is preserved in the scatter of pots and tea bowls across the sea floor.

Recovering a bowl.

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1 comment:

G. Verloren said...

What's incredible to me is how few pieces of porcelain are broken.

I have to assume that these items were not originally just piled in stacks on the ship deck - they presumably were packaged in something like crates, I imagine with lots of cushioning / packing material (straw, perhaps?) which has long since decayed away.

I also wonder if maybe the physics of sea water at a depth of 5000 feet might have contributed? The water pressure is massive that far down, and I'm curious if that might somehow help the water itself to cushion items as they fall, slowing their movement to comparatively gentle rates, limiting the force of any shocks or impacts when they finally contact the sea floor (or each other).

June 22, 2024 at 10:33 PM

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