PhD Title

The Siren of Cirebon: A 10th Century Trading Vessel Lost in the Java Sea

Supervisors

Dr. Ian Caldwell and Professor Victor T King

Research Study

The research will examine a shipwreck found in the Java Sea, the 'Cirebon/Nan-Han' wreck, regarded as one of the most important discoveries in Southeast Asian history in recent years. Discovered 60 nautical miles north of Cirebon, Central Java at a depth of 54 metres, the vessel in all probability was sailing between a port in the Maritime 'Empire' of Srivijaya and a harbour in Central or Eastern Java; a preliminary analysis of her hull's remains indicate the ship to be a 'Western Austronesian', thus 'Malay' or 'Indonesian' vessel.

Photo © Cosmix BV; courtesy Royal Museum Mariemont

Roughly 65 percent of the remaining cargo are Chinese and other ceramics, 10 percent comprise Near East and Indian glassware, gemstones and various raw materials, while the remainder were ingots and manufactured implements of iron and other metals. Chinese cash and ceramics firmly place the wreck in the 10th Century AD: Lead Qian Heng Zhong Bao 乾亨重宝 coins of the Demesne of Nánhàn, which thrived around Guangzhou between 917 and 971, glaze and forms of most of the ceramic objects, and a potter's mark provisionally dated onto 968, suggest that the ship was burdened in the era of the 'Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms', the period between China's Táng and Sòng Dynasties.

Photo © Cosmix BV; courtesy Royal Museum Mariemont

The 10th century was a period of remarkable economic and political dynamics for Insular Southeast Asia; however, the actors in these events –Srivijaya, the polity that dominated maritime Southeast Asia from the seventh to 13th century AD, and its rival, the nascent state of East Java– have left but few written records and hardly any archaeological remains. Our knowledge of 10th century Southeast Asian economy and politics has until now relied mainly on scattered secondary information found in Chinese and Perso-Arabian records. The Nánhàn/Cirebon shipwreck hence represents one of the rare first-hand sources that should shed light on the rise of regional, and, ultimately, inter-national economic and political networks which became so important in the ensuing centuries.

Photo © Cosmix BV; courtesy Royal Museum Mariemont

Background

I submitted my MA thesis on the terminology of boatbuilding in several languages of South Sulawesi, Indonesia, to the University of Cologne in 1992, and since then have conducted various researches on the maritime traditions and history of the Malay Archipelago. Since 2001, I have been associated with the Research Agency for Marine Affairs and Fisheries of the Republic of Indonesia. I was appointed as scientific advisor to the commercial salvage company that between 2004 and 2007 excavated the wreck-site.

Email: mlhhl@leeds.ac.uk