Page 256 - Vol_2_Archaeology of Manila Galleon Seaport Trade

228 P. Fournier and R. Junco Sanchez

of Qing armorial polychrome plate shards (Santos Ramírez 2014: 141). At a small
ranch site in the area, blue on white porcelain and Dehua fragments were found
(Vicente López 2015: 104, 109, 158).
In the desert of Sonora-Arizona ranches, missions and forts were founded in the
late seventeenth century. Our studies of collections from several sites, including
Presidio Fronteras, illustrate the wide variety of porcelains that were available at the
northwestern fringes of New Spain. We were able to identify blue on white vessels
of the Qing dynasty dating to the eighteenth century, kinrande style fragments, café
au lait (Batavian brown), pink and famille verte samples (Fournier 1989a: 33–36),
Chihuahua, part of the northern province of Nueva Vizcaya during the colonial
period, is a vast area mostly covered by deserts, but rich ores were found that led to
the foundation of mining districts. One of those districts has Parral as its core; the
results of archaeological excavations were poorly reported, simply mentioning the
presence of Chinese porcelains with no details provided (Hernández Pons 2000).
However, probate inventories list Chinese porcelains as part of the goods the
wealthy people living in Parral owned. Qing dynasty vessels are listed among their
precious possessions, and in one case the description is so thorough in the docu-
ment that we were able to identify polychrome vessels of the Qianlong period
(Fournier 1989b, 1997; Fournier and Zavala 2014). Also, at a ranch site known as
Casa de Huesos that was supposedly abandoned before 1680 as a result of an Indian
revolt, a Kangxi period blue on white fragment was found dating to the eighteenth
century (Brown and Fournier 2008).
After the discoveries of Don Juan de Oñate north of Chihuahua in what used to
be terra incognita for the Spaniards, the !rst settlement and capital of the Province
of New Mexico was founded in San Gabriel del Yunque in 1599 but it was
abandoned in 1610, when Santa Fe became the new capital. Kinrande style
porcelain was found in San Gabriel del Yunque; at the Palace of the Governors in
Santa Fe, excavations uncovered Kraak, transitional, and famille verte porcelains
(Shulsky 1994). From a small ranch site (LA-20000), transitional porcelain has
been reported (Trigg 2005: 113). South of Santa Fe, at a camp site known as Paraje
de San Diego located by the Royal Road, we identi!ed famille verte porcelain
(Fournier 1999).
Since 1999 work has been carried out in the Baja California Peninsula on the
Paci!c coast on what is believed to be a Manila Galleon wrecked in the late sixteen
century. A collection of over 1700 shards has been collected along 11 km of beach
by the INAH’s Subdirección de Arqueología Subacuática (SAS) (Junco 2011). The
project: Galeón de Manila, Baja California, directed by Dr. Junco and Edward Von
der Porten, is interesting as the collection represents one speci!c year of the
transpaci!c commerce of porcelain. A detailed catalogue of the collection is cur-
rently being prepared in digital format. This assemblage includes several plates of
the type denominated phoenix, bowls with flying dragon motifs, and many
examples of painted bowls among others, similar to ceramics found in underwater
excavations of the wreck of the Nan’ao 1 junk from Fukien (Liu 2016: 197).
The most interesting recent Oriental ceramics project is currently on-going in the
Port of Acapulco. Project Proyecto de Arqueología Marítima del Puerto de