Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Foreign Ceramics Excavated at the Qiwulan Site in Ilan, Taiwan

The Qiwulan site is located on the border between the villages of Erlong and Yutian in the township of Jiaoxi and county of Ilan, Taiwan. Since its first discovery in 2001, the site has yielded over 30,000 fragments of foreign high-fired stoneware and glazed ceramics that range in date from the early sixteenth century (or slightly earlier) to the modern day. The present essay catalogs the sixteenth and seventeenth century ceramic samples obtained from the site. Most of these samples were manufactured in China; a smaller portion was produced in the Southeast Asian regions of Thailand and Myanmar. A wide range of Chinese wares were found; in addition to Jingdezhen products, the site also yielded large quantities of wares from the Zhangzhou kilns in Fujian. The ceramic types that were uncovered included celadons, blue-and-white wares, blue-and-white wares with wucai (five-color) enameling, and earthenware with low-fired lead glazing. The dating of these wares corroborates textual accounts indicating that Chinese fishing vessels had begun visiting the Keelong region of Taiwan by the later half of the sixteenth century. Additionally, ceramics recovered from the tombs at Qiwulan indicate that the glazed ceramics which the Chinese brought to the region were exchanged with, and replaced, the low-fired, unglazed earthenware manufactured by the indigenous Kavalan people.