Here May be Dragons: Cataloguing Sherds from the Temasek Wreck

Altogether we are a very small part of a ground-breaking Singapore maritime heritage project assisting Dr. Michael Flecker and his team of archaeologists to catalog the remains of the Temasek Wreck, the name given to the Chinese Yuan dynasty era shipwreck discovered in Singapore waters in 2014. Although none of the actual ship’s hull survived, excavation of the Temasek Wreck resulted in the largest amount of Yuan blue and white export porcelain ever to be salvaged from a shipwreck – approximately 130 kilograms. And if that is not enough, the cargo is comparable to ceramics previously excavated on land from Singapore’s Temasek era, inspiring all matter of interesting theories about the type of ship, its ultimate destination, its original departure city, and its connection to early Singapore heritage.

A small fraction of the Temasek salvage is already on display in the Singapore Archaeology gallery in the ACM, including the only intact blue and white porcelain ceramic excavated which now can be seen in the Maritime Trade gallery’s “treasure vault.” The rest of the approximately 4.4 tonnes of ceramic sherds are sitting in large plastic bins displaying unique letter and number codes, stacked on shelves in a warehouse looking very much like the closing scene of “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.” However, there is one redeeming difference. Each and every sherd in these bins will be categorized and catalogued and eventually available to view in an open access database.

My volunteer tenure began in July 2022. To get us started, ACM then-curatorial research assistant Ms. Young Wei Ping prepared a comprehensive tutorial on the ceramic typology of the non-blue and white ceramic sherds we would be categorizing. Most are Stoneware sherds including some from Small Mouth Jars (SMJ). The next largest category is Longquan Celadon which is further divided into Celadon A and Celadon B sherds. Celadon A sherds are generally from ceramics which were larger in size and thicker in profile than Celadon B and have incised or moulded decorations as opposed to motifs that are stamped or impressed. Next are sherds from Qingbai wares distinguished by their pale blue-gray color and delicate size, and ones from small bluish white Shufu wares, briefly produced in the fourteenth century. Finally, our last sorting categories are Greenware from Fujian and Dehua white wares.

The process begins with a final cleansing of the sherds to remove the residue from their initial soak in a 5% citric acid solution. The sherds are emptied onto a tabletop from net bags that include a tag which indicates the shipwreck identification code, the dive grid square location on the ocean floor where they were found, and the individual dive number and excavation date. We then use a bucket filled with plain water to rinse them and brush off the loosened coral, calcium deposits, grit and sand. Afterwards we divide the sherds into their ceramic category type. This is the best part! We sometimes find an unusual decoration like an appliqué biscuit dragon or a possible kiln chop mark which we set aside for Dr. Flecker to inspect or sometimes we find an errant blue and white piece revealed after the citric acid bath has removed some of its coral disguise. Sometimes we even find sherds that can be pieced together.

After the gross sorting, we make more refined subgroups within type categories: for instance, Celadon B sherds with similar decorations like lotus flowers or fish, Qingbai foot rings or Stoneware lugs that will make up their own subgroup to be photographed together. The rest are separated into “Instagrammable” groupings, e.g., numbers that can be contained within the frame of a photograph.

Once the sorting has been approved by Dr. Flecker, we create a new tag for each group copying over the shipwreck, grid location, dive and date codes held back from their original netted bags. We add the type of ceramics, count the number of sherds, weigh them, and then add that information to the new tag. The groups are now ready to be photographed.

We assign each group a unique number and place them on a flat black cloth background above a color scale, a ruler and their identification tag and we photograph the sherds on both sides. This part is critical because the photographs will be analyzed later by Dr. Flecker who transfers any additional information they contain into the database.

Each group is then put into a clean net bag and secured. Finally, ten group bags with consecutive identification numbers are grouped together and placed in another net bag and tagged for easy recovery before being put back into the Indiana Jones plastic bins, their information now securely contained in digital photographs and the data base.