Belitung: The Afterlives of a Shipwreck

Abstract

For decades fishermen working the waters between Sumatra, Borneo, and the Malay Peninsula have been aware of the value of ancient ceramics that are sometimes caught in their nets. This is how the Belitung shipwreck was discovered in 1998.Numerous shipwreck sites dating from the tenth to twentieth centuries have been found in Southeast Asia, but older wrecks are very rare. One of these, known as the Belitung, is one of the most fabulous ever found anywhere. The site dates to the period 825–850 CE. Much of the surviving cargo consists of Chinese ceramics; other luxurious Chinese artifacts such as gold and silver objects were also recovered. Another portion of the cargo consisted of large jars containing botanical items such as star anise.The vessel was built in the northwestern Indian Ocean. It had been significantly refitted in Southeast Asia. Its cargo came from China. It sank about 280 miles (450 kilometers) south of Singapore. The ship's destination is unknown. This question is important but not relevant to the book under review. What is germane is that the cargo was legally recovered under Indonesian law at that time by commercial salvors and sold to the Singapore government. A selection of artifacts is displayed at Singapore's Asian Civilisations Museum. Others are on loan to foreign museums. The process through which this situation emerged was not straightforward.The salvage of the cargo was funded by investors who paid a fee to the Indonesian government. Three years after its discovery, UNESCO adopted a convention that requires signatories to ban sales of artifacts found underwater and to preserve (rather than excavate) the sites where they are found. Neither Indonesia nor Singapore (nor the United States) has signed the convention. The Smithsonian Institution participated in an exhibition of artifacts from the cargo in Singapore and published a major catalog.1 The Smithsonian intended to display artifacts from the site in the United States, but some scholars criticized this plan as contravening the UNESCO convention. The Smithsonian consequently dissociated itself from the project.The Singapore government decided to place the collection under the stewardship of the Asian Civilisations Museum, an official organization. A selection of artifacts from the shipwreck is on display in a special gallery overlooking the Singapore River, which by the fourteenth century was an important international port of call. The museum published another large catalog.2The Belitung exemplifies some fundamental quandaries associated with underwater archaeology. How can we reconcile protection, preservation, and education (as advocated by UNESCO) with excavation, which is the only way to learn what shipwrecks can tell us about the past? How can archaeologists find the money necessary to work underwater? How do we store large quantities of objects (such as the sixty thousand items from the Belitung) forever? Is it immoral to sell some to pay for the preservation and interpretation of the rest? Who rightfully owns shipwreck cargoes (and the ships), which are often of mixed origins?Another matter concerns the morality of the sale of the Belitung's cargo to a country (Singapore) that did not exist when the ship sank. Although the author is correct when she implies (16) that Singapore was not linked to long-distance sailing routes when the Belitung went down, it is debatable whether Singapore could be charged with neocolonialism by purchasing this cargo. Although no ninth-century remains have been found in Singapore, a tenth-century inscription on the Indonesian island of Karimun about forty kilometers away and clearly visible from Singapore proclaims that a Mahayana Buddhist named Gautama possessed a sophisticated astronomical instrument (gola yantra in Sanskrit; “armillary sphere” in English). Slightly later Chinese sources record that the people of Karimun collected tolls from passing ships. The people of the Singapore area were indeed involved with maritime trade shortly after the Belitung sank, if not earlier.Pearson argues that the real problem facing museums is not whether to display artifacts from shipwrecks but how to display and interpret them. Much of this book is devoted to justifying her contention that the fate of the artifacts from the Belitung, while not ideal, is the best that could have befallen them under the circumstances. One important aspect of the Belitung is the fact that the cargo was kept intact for study rather than being dispersed.Chapter 2 includes an insightful discussion of the features of shipwrecks that differentiate them from other types of sites. The intricate factors involving “ownership” of shipwrecks have never been reconciled. The preference for in situ preservation of underwater cultural heritage in the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage is not feasible in Southeast Asia: the waters are so shallow that sites on the seabed are easily looted. The governments of the region lack the resources to safeguard a huge number of sites.The best option in the view of some experts is to encourage intensive survey and excavation of sites that cannot be protected. The ban on sales of artifacts recovered underwater makes it financially arduous to implement permanent storage. Other measures, such as tagging artifacts and developing a reward system for reporting the change of custody of artifacts by sale or gift, would be more likely to succeed in reaching a compromise between preservation and dispersal.Pearson has clearly delineated the complexity of the Belitung shipwreck's evolution into museum displays and scholarly research. Ongoing study of the shipwreck continues to enhance our knowledge of ancient maritime trade. It is unlikely that strict adherence to UNESCO principles by archaeologists and governments would have resulted in a more favorable outcome. The cargo would have been looted; the story of the ship would never have been written.

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