Sunken treasure in Indonesian waters could shed light on 10th

Sunken treasure in Indonesian waters could shed light on 10th century Asian trade

[ AP Photos XJAK101-106[ By ROBIN McDOWELL= Associated Press Writer= JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -

Robin McDowell Associated Press/Jakarta

Wooden ships laden with ceramic pots, golden necklaces and valuable spices have for centuries navigated Indonesian waters, a key trade route linking Asia with Europe and the Middle East. And for just as many years, they have been sinking.

No one knows that better than Adi Agung, who later this month will wrap up salvage operations on a Chinese ship that went down in the crystal blue Java Sea more than 1,000 years ago.

So far, 422,000 artifacts have been recovered from the wreckage 54 meters (178 feet) below the surface in what could be the largest cargo of ceramics ever found.

Christie's, which is expected to auction the items in 2006 and 2007, says it's worth millions of dollars (euros).

Most of the goods are fine white or green wares from northern and southern China dating to the early 10th century. But the vessel also contains Egyptian artifacts and Lebanese glassware, and experts say the rarity and variety of the items could shed new light on inter-Asian trade.

Agung, who started the PT Paradigma Putra Sejahtera salvage company four years ago, explored 30 already looted wrecks before receiving word that fisherman had found pieces of ceramics while trawling for snails about 220 kilometers (135 miles) northwest of Jakarta.

"It was unbelievable, amazing," said the 37-year-old Agung, among the first divers to take a look at the wreckage in mid- 2003. "There was no coral at all, just a mound of ceramics" 100 meters (yards) long, 45 meters (yards) wide and 3{ meters (yards) high.

Thirty percent of the pieces were in pristine condition, many of them green ceramic dishes from China's Five Dynasties period (907-960 A.D.)

Among the most prized possessions are a white vase with a long slender neck and sloping shoulders believed to be from the Liao dynasty (907-1125 A.D.) and a flask made of a brilliant emerald green translucent glass tentatively attributed to 10th century Egypt.

There are also thousands of rubies, bronze coins, silver mirrors, ceremonial tools and shipping equipment.

"Discoveries like this show how important the sea floor is," said Thijs Maarleveld, a founding member of the International Committee on the Underwater Cultural Heritage and a lecturer on maritime archaeology at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

But he and other archaeologists consider ship wrecks to be time capsules of the past and worry that when exploration is commercially driven, historical knowledge is lost. They believe underwater archaeological sites deserve the meticulous excavation and documentation used for those on land.

Agung, who calls his wreck the Sriwijaya Cargo, named after the largest Indonesian kingdom of that time, insists he is being careful.

Each artifact is netted, bagged and numbered before it is stored in a warehouse on Jakarta's outskirts, said Agung, while some gold pieces and coins are held in a bank safe deposit box. The Indonesian government, which will receive 50 percent of the proceeds from international or national auctions, is also impressed.

Usually wrecks found in Indonesian waters are immediately looted, said Soeroso, a deputy director of museums and archaeology for Indonesia's Cultural and Tourism Department.

This is one of the rare times that a local salvage crew has followed the country's rules on cultural heritage preservation, said Soeroso, who goes by only one name.

But Dr. George Bass, a leading underwater archaeologist and professor emeritus at Texas A&M University, worries that the wreck may not be receiving the attention it deserves. His crews have excavated dozens of wrecks around the world including a 1300 B.C. Bronze Age ship off Turkey's southern coast, and they normally spend two years on conservation and library research for every month they dive.

"We've learned so much, about what people ate, grooming techniques, where they lived on the ship, what games they played -- remarkable things, because we were careful," said Bass. Others note that even the boat's fragile timber has a story to tell.

"We know dearly little about 10th or 11th century shipbuilding," said Maarleveld, the Dutch professor.

It appears the Sriwijaya ship was relatively small and locally made, with initial carbon testing showing the wood may have come from Indonesia's Sumatra or Kalimantan islands, Agung said.

That would indicate that Chinese and Arabian traders brought the goods to Sriwijaya, he said, for inter-island trade in the region.

Once a wreck is found, questions often arise about ownership: Does it belong to the country that owned the ship, the one that produced the cargo, or the one in whose waters it sank.

But Agung said he has experienced little problem with the Sriwijaya ship, in part because the Chinese -- unlike Europeans -- kept no data on maritime trade a thousand years ago. The vessel was also found in undisputed Indonesian waters.

"If it was, in fact, locally made," he said, "there's even less of a question."

GetAP 1.00 -- SEP 7, 2005 07:24:56