A commercial 3Y-TZP nanopowder was consolidated by spark plasma sintering (SPS) techniques. By special die-upset designs, each possible influence from the electric field, uniaxial pressure and heating rate was peeled to identify its contribution. Besides density and grain growth, the evolution of pore structure was consulted to clarify the relationships between microstructural development and densification kinetics. The results showed that neither electric current nor fast heating had no decisive contributions while external force was a necessity for the microstructural refinement. The authors proposed that the essentially underlying mechanism was the intensive particle rearrangement, which involves no grain growth but particle close-packing through grain rotation and sliding. The full advantages of this mechanism can be taken in rapid heating conditions, which combined with the application of higher pressures, make the SPS family of techniques to have advancement in the preparations of nanoceramics over their conventional counterparts characterized by slow heating features.