Posted on 11/20/2004 11:04:20 AM PST by blam
Archaeological argument breaks out over Indonesian sunken treasure
Thu Nov 18,10:36 PM ET Science - AFP
JAKARTA (AFP) - In the blue waters of the Java Sea, a drama is unfolding around an ancient cargo of sunken treasure, but with corruption and bureaucracy never far from the surface in Indonesia, the tale owes more to Franz Kafka than Indiana Jones.
A team of divers, including two Australians, two Britons, two French, a Belgian and a German, has been working for months to excavate a vessel laden with rare ceramics which sank more than 1,000 years ago off Indonesia's shores.
Their finds, including artefacts from China's Five Dynasties period from 907 to 960 AD and ancient Egypt, are already causing a stir among archaeologists who say the cargo sheds new light on how ancient merchant routes were forged.
But with items expected to fetch millions of dollars in European auction houses, the work has become embroiled in a murky dispute between the divers and Indonesian authorities over who will profit from the sub-aquatic swag.
According to the divers, the excavation was brought to an abrupt halt last week when an Indonesian navy vessel pulled alongside their diving platform.
"We were taken from the barge and brought back to land. We don't have permission to leave the country or Jakarta," said French diver Daniel Visnikar.
An official report by Indonesia's Agency for the Protection of Underwater Heritage seen by AFP accuses the operation of "employing illegal foreign workers who are excavating precious sunken artefacts".
The divers deny they are acting illegally and insist, despite their run-in with the navy, they were working with the cooperation of the Indonesian government.
"We have all the necessary documents to carry out the diving, which always takes place in the presence of Indonesian government representatives," Visnikar said.
The boat at the centre of the storm rests 54 metres below the surface, approximately 130 nautical miles from Jakarta. Early material recovered from the site has whetted the appetite of overseas experts.
"A 10th century wreck is very rare, there are only a few," said Jean-Paul Desroches, a curator at the Guimet Museum in Paris. He has studied photographs of the findings and describes the artefacts as "extremely interesting".
He says the wreck and its cargo offers clues to how traders using the Silk Road linking China to Europe and the Middle East, used alternative sea routes as China's merchants moved south because of invasions from the north.
This evidence includes delicate crockery, glassware and rubies and sapphires.
"It seems to be one of the largest boats containing ceramics ever found," said Luc Heymans, the European-funded project's Belgian director.
He said that according to an official agreement, Indonesia will receive 50 percent of proceeds from the sale of the treasures. He insisted the scheme was legal.
"We have filled all our requirements to Indonesia. They have a complete list of everything that has been extracted from the ship and brought to Jakarta," Heymans said.
Laws governing the protection of Indonesia's antiquities have long been a grey area, with the country's endemic culture of corruption encouraging widespread plunder involving, in many cases, police and military.
It was not possible to check the validity of permits being used by the Java Sea wreck team, but diver Jean-Paul Blancan insists the reason they incurred the navy's wrath is because they used legal instead of corrupt channels.
"We are certainly one of the only teams to have worked completely within the law. That must upset a few people. Here nobody works like that," he said.
So far some 60,000 of 160,000 items contained in the wreck have been retrieved and placed a hangar in Jakarta, according to the divers. They are likely to remain there until the dispute is settled.
The divers say treasures are expected to be shown between 2006 and 2007 in an auction organised by Christie's, which has valued the cargo at several million dollars.
GGG Ping.
walk into a bar and one of the Aussies says...
The treasure trove doesn't go with the indoor job...but if you found some 7000 yr old wood, you must have been outside when you were doing this! Where do you live and how did you find it?
I was at Santa Rosa Sound, Florida when they were dredging to put in a pipe line and they ran into an underwater forest of cypress trees. Someone from The University Of Florida dated the wood to 7,000 years ago.
"Where do you live and how did you find it?"
I presently live on Mobile Bay. Dauphin Island (the capitol of the Louisiana Terratories(sp) in 1699) is just down the road...that's probably my best chance.
You invented 6?
Would you like to buy a map?
Yup, 30 years making chips...related to that.
Hee, hee. (The only one of it's kind, huh?)
Sure will be. Do you prefer pencil or crayon?
There's gotta be something around where you live, either Spanish or French! The Spanish used to take their treasure up the Atlantic coast of Florida, where much of it was lost to storms and French or English pirates.
But both of these countries supplied their colonies; what wrecks have there been in your part of the Gulf?
From what I've seen, you are looking in all the wrong places. In fact, I would say your posts here have CREATED a treasure-trove for the rest of us. Knowledge is the greatest treasure.
Just those from the Battle Of Mobile Bay, that I know...and those were war ships.
Yes, they would all probably have been war ships or early expeditionary ships. Spanish ships carried some things with them that might now be valuable (I'm not up on the French, but they probably did, too), but probably not in the treasure category.
What about some other kind of "treasure"? Nobody has ever known exactly where the Spanish mission chain went. It seems to have started around St. Augustine, FL or perhaps a little further north in Georgia, and then had several branches. There was one that went straight through GA, spreading a little to the north and far to the west, and another one that swooped up across N. Florida from St. Augustine.
I have always thought it would be wonderful to know exactly where the Spanish went on these treks. The major problem is that the climate of the South has obliterated most of their traces, including the Spanish missions, which were built of wood and decayed and disappeared after the Indians who lived in them were attacked by the British.
[French] diver Jean-Paul Blancan insists the reason they incurred the navy's wrath is because they used legal instead of corrupt channels.I'm tryin' to care. The Indonesian gov't isn't in control of its own navy, it figures.
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Their finds, including artefacts from China's Five Dynasties period from 907 to 960 AD and ancient Egypt,Ancient Egypt? Huh...
Not suprising. Didn't we have an article sometime back about a sea borne 'Silk-Road' during Roman times?
Because of the cocaine and nicotine found in some of the oldest Egyptian mummies...some (even me) have speculated that there was once a trade route all the way from South America to Egypt in ancient times. (maybe land and sea?)
I invented 9.
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