{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,14]],"date-time":"2026-07-14T18:47:57Z","timestamp":1784054877933,"version":"3.55.0"},"reference-count":27,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,18]],"date-time":"2026-02-18T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1771372800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Sichuan University, Center for Archaeological Science Fund","award":["23SASA02"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["23SASA02"]}]},{"name":"Sichuan Province Key Research and Development Fund","award":["2023YFWZ0009"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2023YFWZ0009"]}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["W2433165"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["W2433165"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Foundation of Xihua University","award":["ZX20250124"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["ZX20250124"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Study of early Chinese ceramics is crucial for understanding cultural, economic, and technological developments in Chinese history. With the evolving deep learning techniques, one urgent question would be, whether we can identify early Chinese ceramics by a simple 2D image without further domain knowledge. This work collected a highly diverse dataset for ancient Chinese ceramics from 15 dynasties, with 4 representative glaze colors and 15 shape types. We studied the performance of five state-of-the-art neural networks on two identification tasks: ceramic visual feature recognition and early Chinese ceramic dating. A class-imbalance learning strategy is designed to improve the models\u2019 performance on multi-label tasks. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first to introduce deep learning into early Chinese ceramic recognition on a large scale. Experiments prove that deep learning can recognize visual features like glaze and most shape types with high accuracy, while ceramic dating is feasible for the main dynasties but remains challenging along the overall history. Further quantitative assessment shows that cultural inheritance and artistic continuity can lead to reasonable false dating by classifying ceramics into adjacent dynasties or periods. Moreover, although domain knowledge is required for interpretation, deep learning shows great potential in recognizing even unlabeled time-relevant features, which can help study the inheritance and evolution of early Chinese ceramic development.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s26041312","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,18]],"date-time":"2026-02-18T09:22:46Z","timestamp":1771406566000},"page":"1312","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Can Deep Learning Identify Early Chinese Ceramics Using Only 2D Images?"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"26","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7667-9780","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ang","family":"Bian","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer and Software Engineering, Xihua University, Chengdu 610000, China"},{"name":"Center for Archaeological Science, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610000, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Wei","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for Archaeological Science, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610000, China"},{"name":"College of Computer Science, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610000, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7884-2836","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Andreas","family":"Nienk\u00f6tter","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for Archaeological Science, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610000, China"},{"name":"Institute for Disaster Management and Reconstruction, Sichuan University-Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Chengdu 610000, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9497-6658","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Baofeng","family":"Di","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for Archaeological Science, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610000, China"},{"name":"Institute for Disaster Management and Reconstruction, Sichuan University-Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Chengdu 610000, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4265-788X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Tian","family":"Deng","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Electronic Information and Communications, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430000, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yi","family":"Luo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Architecture and Art Design, Jiangxi University of Science and Technology, Ganzhou 341000, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5221-3655","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Peng","family":"Chen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer and Software Engineering, Xihua University, Chengdu 610000, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Xi","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer and Software Engineering, Xihua University, Chengdu 610000, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,18]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"10589","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ceramint.2019.02.125","article-title":"The colouring mechanism of the Brown glaze porcelain of the Yaozhou Kiln in the Northern Song Dynasty","volume":"45","author":"Wen","year":"2019","journal-title":"Ceram. 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