provenance research on 14th-century greenwares found in singapore

Stulemeijer: Provenance Research on 14th-Century Greenwares Found in Singapore NSC Working Paper No. 9
5.3. Archaeological data
In 1984, Dr. John N. Miksic conducted the first scientific archaeological excavation in
Singapore. Over the next twenty years he would lead many more teams of volunteers in
unearthing parts of ancient Singapore.
At the start of my <strong>research</strong> the artefacts recovered from the Fort Canning (FTC) excavations
were under post-excavation investigation and thus the excavated artefacts are not included
in this study. Sherds from the two excavation sites further discussed in this paper are
Empress Place (EMP) and the Singapore Cricket Club (SCC). These were used for the
purpose of this <strong>research</strong>, as they were able to supply the
number of sherds required to satisfy scientific statistical
requirements for such <strong>research</strong>.
5.3.1. Empress Place (EMP)
This site is currently better known as the location of the Asian
Civilisations Museum. The excavation site at EMP was
located in between the current museum and the river. This
patch of grass was excavated in 1998 and, as shown on the
map in figure 2, is just inside the mouth of the Singapore
River (covered by the Esplanade Bridge).
During the
excavation, it became apparent that there were two distinct
occupational layers. The first habitation layer (counting from the top) was determined as
containing artefacts from the Dutch VOC Company (Dutch East India Company) including
coins and Chinese porcelain from the latter half of the 18 th century. Artefacts from this era
have not been retrieved from any other archaeological site in Singapore.
Figure 2:
Empress Place
Excavation Site street
Streedirectory.com
The second habitation layer was dated from the late 13 th to mid-15 th century. This was
determined by stylistic analysis of Chinese porcelain and comparison with samples of known
data found in China. EMP is situated just inside the mouth of the Singapore River. It is likely
that this area was a large sandbar that just rose above the water at normal high tide. From
the excavation at EMP an estimated 40,000 artefacts were unearthed (Miksic & Low 2004).
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