‘X-ray gun’ helps researchers pinpoint the Chinese origin of pottery found on ancient shipwreck that sank off the coast of Indonesia 800 years ago
- Scientists zapped ceramics with an ‘x-ray’ gun to determine its origin in China
- The handheld gun means objects no longer need to be put in an X-ray machine
- Little was known about the ship as there were no written records of its wreck
- It is now thought that the ship sank 2,000 miles from where it loaded its cargo
The mystery of the cargo of a ship that sank 800 years ago may finally be solved after archaeologists zapped its contents with an ‘x-ray gun’.
Scientists in the US have been using new handheld portable X-ray fluorescence detector on ceramic bowls from the wreck to identify where they came from.
With no written records on the ship, which sank off the coast of Indonesia, little information was known about where it was coming from or went.
With their new gadget, scientists from the Field Museum in Chicago were able to pinpoint more precisely where the ceramics were made in southeastern China.
Scientists zap shipwrecked ceramics from 80-years-ago with ‘x-ray’ gun to determine its origin in China. The handheld gun means objects no longer need to be put in an X-ray machine
Scientists now know that the ceramics came from 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from where the ship sank, which is about the distance from New York to Las Vegas.
Wenpeng Xu, the study’s lead author from the University of Illinois at Chicago, said: ‘It’s amazing that we can pinpoint the production area of materials from an 800-year-old shipwreck.’
Traditionally, archaeological artefacts would have been put through X-ray machines to determine their composite makeup.
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There are no written records on the ship, which disappeared off the coast of the islands of Java and Sumatra.
But there are an estimated 7,500 pieces of cargo recovered from the wreck.
Archaeologists studied 60 ceramic pieces from the mysterious shipwreck of porcelain bowls and boxes covered in a bluish-white glaze called qingbai.
Based on this style, scientists knew that it came from southeastern China, but were far from pinpointing the location since many kilns from there produced similar-aesthetics.
Little was known about the ship as there were no written records but it is now thought that the ship sank 2,000 miles from where its cargo was loaded. Archaeologists studied 60 ceramic pieces from the mysterious shipwreck of porcelain bowls and boxes covered in a bluish-white glaze called qingbai
But the specific make up of the ceramics tell you where it originated, since there will be a notable difference in a particular region’s clay or in the recipes that potters used to mix their clay.
By comparing the chemical makeups of ceramics from the wreck and from different kiln sites in China, the researchers were able to more precisely determine where the ceramics were made.
‘Each kiln site uses its own materials and ingredients for clay–that’s what makes each sample’s fingerprint unique,’ said Xu.
‘If the fingerprint of the sample matches the fingerprint of the kiln site, then it’s highly possible that that’s where the sample came from.’
Lisa Niziolek, a Field Museum Research Scientist and co-author of the study said: ‘You’re shooting X-rays into a material you’re interested in. It excites the material’s atoms. Energy goes flying out, and this measures that energy. Different elements have different signatures of energy that comes back out.’
The use of the project’s new gadget and the study has allowed the researchers to build a picture of the extent of the navel trade networks in the 12th and 13th Century between Asia and Africa. It demonstrated that trade was much more ‘global’ than people thought
The use of the project’s new gadget and the study has allowed the researchers to build a picture of the extent of the navel trade networks in the 12th and 13th Century between Asia and Africa.
It demonstrated that trade was much more ‘global’ than people thought, says the Field Museum’s MacArthur Curator of Anthropology Gary Feinman.
He said: ‘We’re taught to associate vast trade networks with Europeans like Magellan and Marco Polo, but Europeans weren’t a big part of this network that went from Asia to Africa. Globalization isn’t just a recent phenomenon–it’s not just Eurocentric, not just tied to modern capitalism. The ancient world was more interconnected than a lot of people thought.’
WHAT IS AN X-RAY?
An X-ray produces images of by firing a type of radiation through the object which then gets absorbed at different rates by different parts of the item.
A detector than picks up the X-rays after they have passed through and turns them into an image.
Dense parts that X-rays find it more difficult to pass through, such as bones, show up as clear white.
Softer parts, like the heart and lungs, show up darker.
X-rays may be used to detect broken bones, tooth problems, tumours, and lung or heart problems, to name a few.
Many people are concerned about being exposed to X-ray radiation, however, the part of the body being examined is only exposed for a fraction of a second.
The amount of radiation used is generally the equivalent to between a few days to a few years of that given off naturally by the environment.
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