Fishing village, SAR and heritage site: Archaeology in Macao
A piece of Kraak ware unearthed from the St. Paul’s College site Photo: PROVIDED TO GUANGMING DAILY
At the southern tip of mainland China, Macao, along with Guangzhou and Hong Kong, is located on the outer edge of the Pearl River Estuary (Lingdingyang Bay). In the Ming Dynasty (960–1279), Macao was a small fishing village. In the 32nd year of the reign of the Jiajing Emperor (1553), the Portuguese, who claimed to need to air their goods, entered Macao. They then started to develop the land by such acts as building churches, establishing schools and constructing fortifications. Superior geographical location and constant growth of maritime trade helped Macao develop rapidly during the Ming and Qing dynasties. It metamorphosed from a fishing village into the foremost trade port and a center of East-West exchange along China’s coastline.
Early development
Portuguese management undoubtedly contributed to the rise of Macao’s economy and historical significance, but it is also part of the history of China being invaded by Western powers. In 1984, Deng Xiaoping first publicly proposed the concept of “one country, two systems” to tackle the problems passed down through the history of Macao. The Chinese and Portuguese governments held four rounds of negotiations and finally reached agreements in 1987. On Dec. 20, 1999, the Chinese government officially resumed sovereignty over Macao.
Due to over 400 years of the fusion and coexistence of Eastern and Western cultures, Macao has become a city with a unique style, leaving many historical and cultural relics, of which the ruins of St. Paul’s College of Macao is most representative. St. Paul’s College of Macao was a higher-education college founded by Catholic Jesuits that existed for 168 years from 1594 to 1762. The college was not only a residence for many missionaries traveling to East Asia but also the first Western educational institution, equivalent to a modern-day university, in the East Asia. It profoundly influenced the development of modern education in mainland China and East Asia.
On July 15, 2005, the Historic Centre of Macao, which consists of 22 buildings located on the Macau Peninsula and eight adjacent small squares centered around the old town area, was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, making it the 31st designated World Heritage site in China. The heritage includes the front wall of St. Paul’s Church (commonly known as the “Big Samba Torii”), which is closely related to the site of St. Paul’s College. The application to be listed as world cultural heritage requires compliance with international standards, of which authenticity and integrity are the most basic requirements. Therefore, it was urgent to figure out the distribution and layout of the St. Paul College site through archaeological research.
Archaeological work
Macao made little archaeological effort during the period between becoming a Portuguese colony in 1887 to its return to China in 1999. At that time, the SAR had no professional archaeological organization and had only barely launched large-scale archaeological activities, the limited work relying on Portugal and Hong Kong. After the return of Macao, the SAR government began to recover and emphasize the archaeological undertaking of cultural relics highlighted by the inclusion of the Historic Centre of Macao. However, only a few archaeological excavations were carried out in the first ten years after the return due to a lack of archaeological professionals.
In 2010, at the invitation of the Macao Cultural Affairs Bureau, the Institute of Archaeology at CASS established the Macao Archaeological Team to conduct a comprehensive investigation and excavation of the St. Paul’s College site, charting a new chapter in Macao’s archaeology. What deserves attention is that this was the first time archaeological excavations had been carried out in cooperation between Mainland China and Macao, and to date, it has been the largest and most enduring project.
Through years of continuous work, the institute has not only laid the foundation for the development of archaeological work in Macao but also promoted Macao’s policy targeting the protection and use of cultural heritage. On March 1, 2014, the Cultural Heritage Protection Law was officially promulgated and implemented. At the same time, the Macao Archaeological Team trained a group of young archaeological professionals who have now grown into the backbone of Macao archaeology.
Maritime Silk Road
Macao covers an area of over 30 square kilometers, but it has a set of world cultural heritage consisting of up to 30 scattered sites. It has many relics that are intimately associated with the Maritime Silk Road, such as churches, cemeteries, temples, docks and military defense facilities as well as dozens of museums and various historical and cultural landscapes.
In the context of the ban on maritime activities in the mid-Ming Dynasty, Macao was Guangzhou’s most important port for foreign trade between the 16th and the 19th centuries, becoming a major node of the Maritime Silk Road. It played a big part in exchanges with Japan, Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas. The goods that stopped at the port were mainly daily necessities (silk, spices, tea) and military items (artillery). Frequent trade and unique geographical conditions have shaped today’s Macao. The modern history of Macao carries traditional Chinese culture and the harmonious coexistence of Eastern and Western civilizations, such as the change in Macao’s layout brought about by the Maritime Silk Road.
Before the arrival of the Portuguese, Macao was merely a remote fishing village. To quickly establish a foothold, overseas visitors, including Portuguese, set up a series of fortresses on many vantage points, such as Fortress Hill, Eastern Wangyang Hill and Western Wangyang Hill, and they constructed city walls to connect them, thereby isolating the northern part of the Macao Peninsula. Later, in that southern part, an ancient city with European characteristics gradually took shape, where many small squares, European buildings such as churches and theaters, and other Chinese-style buildings, temples, shrines and residential areas became intertwined in natural harmony.
In terms of construction materials and techniques, the ancient city mirrors the collision and fusion of Eastern and Western cultures. For example, the well-preserved front wall and the remaining thick rammed earth walls on both wings of St. Paul’s Church were built by a technical combination of traditional Chinese rammed earth and Western-style stone construction. The road paving in the ancient city also adopted different methods such that Chinese flagstone and southern European black-and-white mosaic exist in contrast side-by-side.
Macao is a gateway connecting China and the world along the Maritime Silk Road, serving the bond of exchange in terms of social economy, culture, art, science and technology. Macao’s open port and the rise of maritime transport opened a door for the contact and exchange between Eastern and Western civilizations, which had a significant impact on the modernization process of China and the world, followed by the historical changes this caused.
The Maritime Silk Road serves as a carrier for the application of World Heritage declarations. Based on the new archaeological findings at the St. Paul’s College site, Macao chose it as one of the major sites for the application. From 2010 to 2012, the institute found a large bedrock pit at the St. Paul’s College site. The pit mouth was circular, about 6 meters in diameter and nearly 10 meters in depth. A large number of blue and white porcelain and building components were unearthed among which the most important finding was the discovery of many pieces of Kraak ware, a type of Chinese export porcelain items. According to comparative studies, these porcelains were produced in the middle-to-late Ming Dynasty during the reign of the Wanli Emperor (r. 1573–1620), and also in the reigns of the Tianqi Emperor (r. 1620–1627) and the Chongzhen Emperor (r. 1627–1644). Some items were produced in the early and middle stage of the Qing Dynasty. Most of the porcelain was made in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, and some were also products from Zhangzhou, Fujian Province, and the coastal areas in Guangdong. These unearthed relics reflect Macao’s prosperous trade in ceramics and give evidence that St. Paul’s College was a collective settlement of Western merchants, soldiers, missionaries and affiliates.
In 2015, after the archaeological excavations from 2010 to 2012, staff members of the CASS institute and their counterparts with the former Cultural Property Department under the Macau Affairs Bureau jointly started to compile excavation data and write a report. The “Archaeological Excavation Report of the Saint Paul’s College of Macau Site 2010–2012” was published in late 2019. This was not only the first archaeological report completed by mainland China and Macao but also Macao’s first archaeological report targeting a historical period. Its landmark significance are self-evident to the cause of archaeology and the preservation of Macao’s cultural heritage.
This article was edited and translated from Guangming Daily. Shen Lihua is an assistant research fellow at the Institute of Archaeology at CASS.
edited by MA YUHONG