The Interaction Of Civilization

From the view of anthropology of art, the art of ceramics is in an enormous context of culture. It’s not only objects for daily use, but also a media carrying people’s thinking and feelings, and connecting to the society and culture in history time. Reading ceramics by means of anthropology of art, can understand the culture in history time by replace ceramics back into the cultural context in the time it belonged. So study on ancient ceramics is also a study on ancient society and culture. This dissertation is the very attempting study on society and culture of Yuan Dynasty through study on Yuan Dynasty’s ceramics. The Chinese culture and Persia culture in13-14th century is the exotic culture to Chinese contemporary culture, Jingdezhen and Persian ceramics art will be the field available to work on.The appearance of blue-and-white porcelain in Yuan Dynasty is a big transition in the development of Chinese ceramics, it changed the direction of Chinese ceramics. This change in Yuan ceramics is actually a presentation of cultural change in13-14th century. The change in ceramics is the outcome of common effects by different systems in culture. The anthropologies who study on cultural change divided culture in three system which are technology, society and ideology. But there are other two systems that promote cultural change should also be taken into considered, which are nature and information system. The dissertation is based on the information system which contained communication and diffusion, in order to analyze the agents and dynamics behind the13-14th century’s ceramics change, and even behind the cultural change. Based on information system acquiring a special attention on spatial dimension in addition to time dimension. So in this dissertation, Chinese ceramics is a part of world ceramics art together with Persian ceramics. By comparing and analyzing the ceramics art in the two different but similar cultures, the same and difference in ceramics change, we can get close to the principle of ceramics art exchange, even the principle of cultural exchange, and the meaning of cultural exchange.