Export-Oriented Porcelain Economy in Song-Yuan China: Production Strategies, Interactions, and Networks

Export-oriented mass production is often associated with modern western economies, but similar production systems had already developed in southeast China prior to the modern era. So far, little is known about how large-scale, nonelite production system was organized at the local level to meet the global demands in the premodern period. This dissertation examines the large-scale porcelain production of the Song and Yuan dynasties (960–1368 CE) at Dehua, Fujian, China, where dozens of huge “dragon” kilns produced enormous amounts of porcelains for export. Rather than merely looking at porcelain products from the few “representative” kiln sites, this research aims at examining the production strategies, technological interactions, and production networks at Dehua at the micro level. A combination of multidisciplinary methods—spatial analysis, stylistic analysis, compositional analysis (LA-ICP-MS and pXRF), and social network analysis—were used in this research. Results show that there were two distinct production communities at Dehua—Gaide and Longxun-Sanban, which had different ceramic-making traditions and used local clays for production. Within the same production subregion, there were extensive technological interactions among potters, especially among those in the same village. Each kiln at Dehua might be jointly owned by multiple families or workshops, which produced homogeneous products for overseas markets. The research demonstrates that analyzing large-scale porcelain production at the micro level provides a fine-grained perspective on production organization and interaction within the same production region. It also shows that pXRF is capable of finding compositional patterning within a small region of ceramic production. The identification of two production subregions at Dehua also provides criteria to help more precisely source Dehua wares from shipwrecks or land sites outside China.