Compositional Characteristics of Proto-Porcelain Production Sites in the Dongtiaoxi River Valley in Southeastern China*

Proto-porcelain wares were a type of prestige goods that have been widely discovered in aristocratic tombs and urban centers in pre-Qin China. In the recent decade, the provenance of these wares has become a fruitful research topic, for which a major production center discovered to the south of Lake Tai has presented a promising candidate. As a good number of samples from six major production sites have been analyzed, compositional characteristics of individual production sites of the center have begun to emerge. This study utilizes the existing compositional data of the bodies of these samples and subjects them to principal component analysis (PCA). It appears that the sources of raw material for these production sites vary. Although for Tingziqiao and Changshan the raw material may have been acquired from one source, for Piaoshan and Nanshan it may have been acquired from disparate sources, for Beijiashan it may have been acquired from three sources simultaneously, and for Huoshaoshan it may have been acquired from two sources over time. This study thus offers a finer picture of the compositional characteristics of the samples of the six production sites, advancing the provenance study of the proto-porcelain wares to a new level.