Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Development of a Complex Production Network

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Under the direction of Dr. Laura Junker, Wenpeng Xu, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago, will undertake research to study the development of large-scale production in the context of premodern globalization. Export-oriented mass production is often associated with modern western economies, but similar production systems had already developed prior to the modern era. So far, little attention has been paid to examine how large-scale production was organized at the local level to meet the global demands in the premodern period. Archaeology is uniquely suited to provide relevant insight because it can examine the production activities that were rarely mentioned in historical texts and trace their development through a long-time perspective. By focusing on the large-scale, non-elite production that is not often investigated by archaeologists, this research will add a new dimension to understanding of ancient craft production systems. This research will also provide empirical evidence for studying non-western economic systems that are less frequently addressed in the discussion of ancient economy, thereby contributing to the comparative study of ancient economies across the pre-industrial world. This project will provide essential research training for the doctoral candidate and foster closer academic collaboration between several institutes in the U.S. and China, including the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Field Museum, the Fujian Museum, the Dehua Ceramic Museum, and Peking University. Results from this project will form the basis of one Ph.D. dissertation as well as multiple conference papers and academic publications in both English and Chinese. Xu and his research team will examine the structure and dynamics of production networks as a means of understanding the organization of the large-scale, nonelite production system that feeds into the global trade networks in the premodern period. The research will take place at Dehua in southeast China, where dozens of huge dragon kilns formed an industrial district and mass-produced porcelain products exclusively for export under the Song and Yuan dynasties (960-1368 CE). The researchers will adopt a GIS-based social network analysis approach to study the production networks in the porcelain industry at Dehua. Archaeological information needed to document the inter-kiln similarities will be collected through a multidisciplinary program, including systematic surveys of kiln sites, stylistic analysis of kiln furniture, and compositional analysis (pXRF and LA-ICP-MS) of ceramic products. This project will serve as a pioneer study of investigating the large-scale porcelain production on a regional scale. The innovative approaches used in this project will help build a methodological framework that can be used for other production centers in the past. Additionally, this project will provide a geochemical dataset that can help source the widespread porcelains found along the ancient maritime trade routes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.