At the Jinduzhen Imperial Furnace Institute, Jiangxi province (China), millions of ancient ceramic fragments are being stored and digitized in a database called the ceramic "gene bank".
According to Xinhua, this is considered the first ancient ceramic gene bank in the world. The project is being researched and implemented by the Canh Duc Tran Royal Cellar Institute in collaboration with the University of Tsinghua, the Shanghai Ceramics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and many research partners.
Canh Duc Tran is known as the "saclar capital" of China, with a history of pottery production of more than 1,700 years. To date, nearly 20 million pieces of pottery have been excavated from archaeological sites in the locality.
Each ceramic piece is processed, analyzed and stored with a lot of information such as shape, material, glaze, color, coil marks and engravings. According to the research team, these data act as genes, helping to determine the age, craftsmanship and origin of artifacts.
Currently, the database stores more than one million records from about 12,000 specimens belonging to 3,000 datasets.
Data is also applied in artifact restoration. Researchers said they used AI algorithms to analyze data of 16,000 ceramic pieces, thereby successfully assembling two large jars from the Ming Dynasty - a task previously considered very difficult to perform.
According to Xinhua, the project also aims to build international standards in ceramic research and develop digital maps connecting ceramic collections around the world, thereby supporting research on the history of cultural exchange and trade.
