Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

Although the white porcelain statue cannot be taken out of the water for a short period of time, everyone can still roughly see the contents inside through the transparent container wall.

The entire statue of Guanyin is more than 20 centimeters high, and is covered with green and white glaze. Although the glaze has become rough because it has been soaked in sea water for too long, it can still be seen that it used to be crystal clear and as ice-like as jade.

Guanyin has a strong body, a broad forehead and a plump forehead, and her face is very expressive. The silk shawl, long skirt and other clothing on her body have smooth lines, which set off her beautiful figure.

As for identifying this as Guanyin Bodhisattva and not some other deity, it is also very simple, because the crown on the head of this statue is very distinctive, so professionals here can tell at a glance which statue this deity belongs to.

The Five Dynasties and the Song Dynasty were the periods when Buddhist statues became secular and popular, and were also the climax of sculpture art. The most representative one was the statue of Guanyin Bodhisattva, which was the most worshiped at that time.

It can be seen from the current statue that although the technique of making the image is relatively realistic, it is not vulgar at all. Special attention is paid to the detailed depiction, which can better reflect a standard literati aesthetic taste.

As for the age of firing, it purely depends on the judgment of the professional. After all, Chinese tradition does not leave era marks on the statues, so the identification depends purely on the style.

Fortunately, the style of this statue is not unpopular, so after a brief discussion on the Internet with several other experts who saw the photos and videos, several experts on the ship determined that this Guanyin statue came from the middle and late Northern Song Dynasty.

From this point of view, they must be grateful to China's infrastructure construction. At least because of the nearby island-building project, the wireless base stations deployed nearby help them communicate with the land, which can greatly speed up their research.

Unfortunately, after confirming the production time of this Guanyin statue, we can only confirm that the boat should come from the dynasty after the Northern Song Dynasty, and no more information can be known.

The main reason for this is that the Chinese people have always believed that the older and older the statues of gods are, the better. Therefore, it is normal to put a statue of a god with a history of decades or even hundreds of years on a boat.

To give the simplest example, Liang En's family has the same beliefs as ordinary Chinese people. They may burn incense sticks when they go to the temple, but they basically don't care about it at ordinary times.

But after Liang En brought back the old Longquan kiln cloth bag monk statue last time, his mother set aside a special place at home and burned three incense sticks every day to worship it.

The reason for doing this is also very simple, that is, because this Buddha statue is old, it will be a very effective statue in the eyes of traditional Chinese people.

Fortunately, as the debris covering the wreckage of the sunken ship has been cleared away, and as the contents of the sunken ship continue to be sent to the salvage ship, more and more clues can be found.

This is also thanks to the fact that the Chinese people after the Song Dynasty had the habit of using porcelain as tableware, unlike the Southeast Asians or Indians who directly used leaves as tableware.

Although the poor of that era may not be able to afford all kinds of porcelain, the sailors on the ship could certainly afford it, and these porcelains that could withstand seawater immersion provided great convenience to later researchers.

"These are all blue and white porcelain from folk kilns in the early to mid-Yuan Dynasty." After looking at the porcelain fragments with only one or two pieces with patterns inside, an expert quickly determined the origin of these things.

Different from the statue just now, this kind of folk porcelain for personal use on the ship is the best comparison object for judging the time when the ship sank. Because of the bumps on the ship, a batch of these fragile items must be replenished basically every time it goes to sea.

Therefore, as long as the approximate age of these porcelains is determined, the approximate year of the ship's sinking can be easily deduced.

"This thing cannot be earlier than the middle of the Yuan Dynasty." After another discussion, everyone had a basic judgment on these blue and white porcelains based on their shapes and styles.

As for the inability to be detailed, the reason is that during the entire Yuan Dynasty, the styles of the porcelain fired in these folk kilns did not change much, and there was no unified standard. Unless scientific testing is carried out, it is impossible to determine the specific time.

Since the ship was smashed by the waves on the reef, the difficulty of sorting it out is much easier than expected. At least you can start clearing away the mud at multiple points without worrying about the structure of the ship.

As the cleaning work progressed, the remaining parts of the ship gradually emerged from the seabed. Judging from the wreckage scattered on the bottom of the ship, it was a traditional Chinese sailing ship with watertight compartments.

Judging from the wreckage divided into two parts and the conditions on the nearby reef, it is most likely that the unlucky ship was directly photographed on the reef during the storm and then broke directly from it, so that the current wreckage is mainly concentrated on the two place.

Soon, large boxes filled with seawater were brought up one after another. Inside were neatly placed bowls and plates, occasionally mixed with some jars.

The colors of these things are mainly cyan and white. After a few days of temporary study with several experts, Liang En discovered that these things are blue and white porcelain from JDZ, white porcelain from Dehua kiln and celadon from Longquan kiln.

After a simple sorting, we found that these porcelains were the most common export porcelain produced in southern China during the Song and Yuan Dynasties, and were unearthed throughout Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East and Africa.

However, after careful counting, they found that the quantity of white porcelain from Dehua kiln and blue and white porcelain from JDZ was not large, and the majority was celadon from Longquan kiln.

Judging from the output and the location of the kiln entrance, although JDZ has a high output, it is too far from the coastline. In the Yuan Dynasty, due to the population and economic level of the location where the kiln entrance was located, the output of the Dehua kiln was far inferior to that of the Longquan kiln, which relied on the entire Jiangnan region as its backing.

Especially due to the rapid surrender of the Southern Song Dynasty, the Longquan kiln and nearby areas located in the core area of ​​the Southern Song Dynasty naturally did not suffer much damage. Therefore, by the Yuan Dynasty, it naturally became the most common variety of export porcelain in the Yuan Dynasty.

As we all know, Hailao porcelain is overall the worst among similar porcelains due to long-term seawater immersion and corrosion, and the price is naturally also the cheapest.

In particular, Hailao porcelain is often exported porcelain. It is unlikely that there will be top-quality goods, but usually the price of one type of porcelain will be suppressed once it appears.

After all, the biggest feature of the porcelain fished out from the ship is that the quantity is large enough. It can be tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even hundreds of thousands at a time.

It's just that this time Liang En and the others are doing archeology, not a commercial treasure hunt, so no matter how much or how little, it won't have much impact on them.

Even from an archaeological perspective, everyone hopes that more porcelain can be found, because then there will be more samples for everyone to inspect.

While everyone was examining these hundreds of cups and plates, a small boat was sent to the excavation site to temporarily deliver a small plastic frame containing a dozen small black cups.

"We just found these things at the stern of the ship. They should be placed in a small box alone." The crew member explained to Liang En who came out to get the things.

"Because these things are placed separately, we thought these things should be very important, so we brought them to you as soon as we came out of the water."