A Preliminary Study On The Pitted Porcelain Of The Song And Yuan Dynasties In Sichuan

The paper is concerned with a preliminary study of the pitted porcelain of the Song and Yuan dynasties in Sichuan, including their excavation and review, varieties, categories, types, decorative crafts, producing site, years and why they are pitted.The main contents of the paper are divided into four parts.Part One is mainly concerned with the excavation and geographical distribution of the pitted porcelain of the Song and Yuan dynasties in Sichuan. Based on an overall collection of the all-ready published materials, the paper introduces the excavation of the pitted porcelain of the Song and Yuan dynasties.Part Two divides the pitted porcelain of the Song and Yuan dynasties in Sichuan into seven varieties. After an overall introduction to the categories, types and decorative crafts according to the amount of the unearthed porcelain, this part sums up the similarities and differences of the variant categories in type and decorative craft.Part Three makes an inference and conclusion of the producing sites of each of the seven categories motioned above in the light of the achievements of the archaeological studies, the findings and the former scholars’ researches, offering the author’s personal view of the attribution of the producing sites of certain porcelain. Taking a pit as a unit, this part of the paper provides a statistics of the producing sites of every piece of the pitted porcelain, and also sums up the distribution of the porcelain kept in all the main producing sites of the Song and Yuan dynasties in all areas of China.Part Four taking porcelain as the main objective of the researches, on the basis of which a conclusion is made of the different periods of the Song and Yuan dynasties, in regard to some main categories of the roughcast, glaze, mould-making and change of the decorative crafts, and mainly based on the conclusion combined with other year-recorded data, a preliminary inference and conclusion is made of the time of all the pitted porcelain,a summary is made of the characteristics of the pitted porcelain.this part of the paper makes an analysis of why the porcelain were pitted, and thus points out that war is the main factor of pitting the porcelain at that time.