A Discussion of the Chinese Ceramics Recovered From the Wreck of the Batu Hitam

In 1998, a sunken T'ang dynasty vessel, known at the Batu Hitam, was discovered off the coast of Belitung Island, Indonesia. The present essay attempts to reconstruct, by way of a detailed examination of its ceramic cargo, the original route of this fated vessel. Approximately 60,000 ceramic items were recovered from the Batu Hitam wreck. The majority of these were fired during the 9th century at the Ch'ang-sha kilns in Hunan, the Yueh kilns of Chekiang, the Hsing kilns in Hopei, and at various Kwangtung Kilns. The discovery also included three pieces of so-called T'ang ‘blue-and-white’ware, fired at the Kung-hsien kilns in Honan, as well as nearly 200 pieces of white ware with painted green decor. The provenance of this last set of pieces has sparked a deal of scholarly controversy. Here, I suggest that they hail from kilns in the Hobei region, and may in fact be the products of the famous Hsing kilns themselves. Judging from the diversity of the Batu Hitam embarked from the port of Yangchow and that its intended destination was the famous Persian trade center and crossroads of Siraf.