A Chinese Porcelain Jar Associated with Marco Polo: A Discussion from an Archaeological Perspective

Abstract

As the first European to claim that he travelled to China and back, Marco Polo is a celebrated traveller who described the multicultural society of Eurasia in the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries ad. However, his famed account, the Travels of Marco Polo, contains many unsolved mysteries which have generated discussion among historians, while an archaeological approach has been even less convincing because the material that may link to Marco Polo is very rare. A recent re-analysis of Chinese ceramics from a wide geographical area ranging from southern China to the Indian Ocean provides some archaeological support: it suggests that a Chinese porcelain jar housed in the Treasury of San Marco in Venice dates to the era of Marco Polo and is associated with his journey to China.

The earliest Chinese ceramics in Europe?

“…These are found in thirteenth-and fourteenth-century contexts associated with wealthy merchants and diplomatic circles (e.g. Whitehouse 1966, with finds requiring reassessment; Amouric & Vallauri 2000;Roascio 2015;Lin & Zhang 2018). By then, Chinese wares were more common across Asia and Egypt, where archaeological finds amount to thousands of sherds, contrasting sharply with their rarity in earlier centuries (Yuba 2014).…”

The World of the Ancient Silk Road

“…With these commercial networks established between the West and East, rather than Arabs only trading system, a diversity of people including many travellers and envoys could move around and trade. Famous travellers, such as Marco Polo, Yang Tingbi, Wang Dayuan and Ibn Battuta, have been very well discussed and described in historical and archaeological studies (Ibn Battuta, 1929, Polo, 1938, Wang, 1981, Chaudhuri, 1985, Abu-Lughod, 1989, Sen, 2006: 301-12, Park, 2012, Lin and Zhang, 2017. Pope Clement V also sent a group of missionaries, via India, to Yuan China in 1307 CE, which was well recorded in both historical and archaeological evidence (Moule, 1914: 540, Zhang and Zhu, 1977: 266-67, Lin, 2013.…”

Sino-Arabian Economic and Cultural Exchanges From the 8th to the 15th Centuries

“…With these commercial networks established between the West and East, rather than Arabs only trading system, a diversity of people including many travellers and envoys could move around and trade. Famous travellers, such as Marco Polo, Yang Tingbi, Wang Dayuan and Ibn Battuta, have been very well discussed and described in historical and archaeological studies (Ibn Battuta, 1929, Polo, 1938, Wang, 1981, Chaudhuri, 1985, Abu-Lughod, 1989, Sen, 2006: 301-12, Park, 2012, Lin and Zhang, 2017. Pope Clement V also sent a group of missionaries, via India, to Yuan China in 1307 CE, which was well recorded in both historical and archaeological evidence (Moule, 1914: 540, Zhang and Zhu, 1977: 266-67, Lin, 2013.…”