The blue and white ceramics come from the Javanese shipwreck collection of an out-of-town museum. Copyright Field Museum.

Scientists have just used a "ray gun" to blast pottery from an ancient sunken ship. In addition to being completely science fiction, X-ray blasters revealed the origins of pottery.

The wreck is a 12th or 13th century merchant ship that is believed to have sailed from Quanzhou in southeastern China with the Indonesian island of Java as its destination. However, it sank in the Java Sea near the islands of Java and Sumatra, taking its cargo with it into a puddle. Discovered by local fishermen in the 1980s, the ship and its contents were discovered 10 years later. About 7,500 items are currently in the collection of the Field Museum in Chicago.

In a new study, researchers have solved an age-old mystery: where pottery came from. The shape and design of the artifacts suggest they originated in southeastern China—in fact, two boxes described in 2018 even included an identifying stamp. But pinpointing where the pots were made is more difficult because the kilns used to produce them are so common in the region, the scientists wrote in the study. [Photo: The origin of ancient Chinese shipwreck pottery]

To discover this phenomenon, scientists observed 60 pieces of pottery from the sunken ship that were coated with a bluish-white coating called Qingbai; Porcelain is fired at high temperatures and is almost glass-like, study co-author Lisa Niziolek, a research scientist in Asian anthropology at the Field Museum, told Live Science.

Lead study author, Xu Wenpeng, a doctoral student in anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, proposed non-invasive, non-destructive X-ray fluorescence analysis of the composition of blue and white glaze to reveal the chemical secrets of pottery. Using a handheld device that resembles a sci-fi ray gun, the researchers collected data on Javanese shipwreck pottery and compared it with pottery shards collected from four kiln clusters in China, with samples within each kiln cluster representing several kiln clusters. .

Ceramic production fragments at the Shimenling kiln site in De, China. (Photo by Xu Wenpeng)

Research shows that changes in the composition of clay, or ingredients mixed together by pottery manufacturers, create differences in the finished vessel by measuring and comparing their energy signatures, which can be detected with X-ray technology come out. By blasting the shipwreck ceramics and kiln tail fragments with a ray gun device, the researchers were able to map the shipwreck ceramics and kiln tail fragments into a map of the kiln site dating back centuries.

They divided the shipwreck ceramics into several groups and found matches in these groups that matched the kiln sites in Jingdezhen, Dehua, Daoling, Huajiashan and Minqing near Fuzhou Port.

In fact, their findings suggest that the ship's port of departure was Fuzhou - where most of the pottery on the wreck originated - and that it likely later sailed to Quanzhou to pick up porcelain from other kiln groups , scientists report that ceramic bowls were found underwater at the Javanese shipwreck site. (Copyright Anthropological Field Museum. Pacific Sea Resources) Photos provided by Xu said the number of kilns associated with the shipwreck's blue-and-white ceramics suggests that merchants and merchants were not dependent on A manufacturer came to meet the demand for high-quality ceramics and figuring out where the pottery came from adds tantalizing detail to the trade routes that were important centuries ago, Niziolek said. Bigger than expected ” For those who have been educated to think that large-scale trade networks are only associated with modern Western capitalism, this shipwreck can really challenge these ideas.