Contains a report on the Wanli shipwreck excavation and a catalogue of the excavated artefacts. Details the process of onboard artefact recording, dive planning and artefact preservation and following research.

In 1997 Michael Flecker investigated a shipwreck in the north Java sea. The wreck comprised the remains of a mid 10th-century ship with its cargo of thousands of ceramic and non-ceramic artefacts. This report describes the methodology and aims of the underwater operation, discusses the finds that were recovered and places these within the context of maritime archaeology in southeast Asia. Flecker evaluates the evidence from the Intan shipwreck alongside contemporary historical information about sea travel, ports, trade routes and cargoes.

This book focuses on the archaeological and historical research on the seaport heritage of galleon navigation in Asia-Pacific region. It reconstructs the Manila Galleons’ era of early maritime globalization, established and operated by Spanish navigators from the 16th to 19th centuries. The galleons sailed across the Pacific via the hub seaports and trade centers of Manila in the Philippines and Acapulco in Mexico, forming a prosperous sea route connecting eastern Asia and New Spain on the American continent for more than 250 years. This pioneering navigation of the pan-Pacific regions promoted early global maritime trade along the new Maritime Silk Road between the East and the West. Written by archaeologists and cultural historians from America, Mexico, Japan, the Philippines, Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, it presents the latest investigations and research on the galleon-affiliated seaports, including Acapulco and San Blas in Mexico, Guam, Manila in Philippines, Yuegang (Crescent Harbor), Xiamen (Amoy), Keelung and Macao in China, Nagasaki in Japan. This joint research sheds new light on the history of navigation and maritime trade between galleon-affiliated harbors; the origin, production, transport and trade of the galleon cargo; social cultural exchange along the new Maritime Silk Road in the pan-Pacific region; and the history of maritime globalization in last 500 years. It offers a new perspective on maritime archaeology and traces the different stages of the galleon trade and affiliated maritime history, including "Yuegang Outbound", "Manila Entrepotting" and "Bound for Acapulco", presenting a panoramagram of Spanish pan-Pacific trade and early maritime globalization.

The archaeological geology of the Quaternary or the geological epoch during which humankind evolved is a scientific endeavor with much to offer in the fields of archaeology and palaeoanthropology. Earth science techniques offer diverse ways of characterizing the elements of past landscapes and archaeological facies. This book is a survey of techniques used in archaeological geology for the study of soils, sediments, rocks and minerals. The techniques presented represent those most commonly used today. They are discussed in detail and examples are provided, in many cases, to demonstrate their usefulness to archaeologists.

A compelling examination of the ultimate global commodity, blue and white porcelain, from kiln to consumers across the globe.

This book focuses on prehistoric East Asian maritime cultures that pre-dated the Maritime Silk Road, the "Four Seas" and "Four Oceans" navigation system recorded in historical documents of ancient China. Origins of the Maritime Silk Road can be traced to prosperous Neolithic and Metal Age maritime-oriented cultures dispersed along the coastlines of prehistoric China and Southeast Asia. The topics explored here include Neolithisation and the development of prehistoric maritime cultures during the Neolithic and early Metal Age; the expansion and interaction of these cultures along coastlines and across straits; the "two-layer" hypothesis for explaining genetic and cultural diversity in south China and Southeast Asia; prehistoric seafaring and early sea routes; the paleogeography and vegetation history of coastal regions; Neolithic maritime livelihoods based on hunting/fishing/foraging adaptations; rice and millet cultivation and their dispersal along the coast and across the open sea; and interaction between farmers and maritime-oriented hunter/fisher/foragers. In addition, a series of case studies enhances understanding of the development of prehistoric navigation and the origin of the Maritime Silk Road in the Asia-Pacific region.

The period 1200-1600 CE saw a radical transformation from simple chiefdoms to kingdoms (in archaeological terminology, complex chiefdoms) across lowland South Sulawesi, a region that lay outside the ‘classical’ Indicized parts of Southeast Asia. The rise of these kingdoms was stimulated and economically supported by trade in prestige goods with other parts of island Southeast Asia, yet the development of these kingdoms was determined by indigenous, rather than imported, political and cultural precepts. Starting in the thirteenth century, the region experienced a transition from swidden cultivation to wet-rice agriculture; rice was the major product that the lowland kingdoms of South Sulawesi exchanged with archipelagic traders. Stephen Druce demonstrates this progression to political complexity by combining a range of sources and methods, including oral, textual, archaeological, linguistic and geographical information and analysis as he explores the rise and development of five South Sulawesi kingdoms, known collectively as Ajattappareng (the Lands West of the Lakes). The author also presents an inquiry into oral traditions of a historical nature in South Sulawesi. He examines their functions, their processes of transmission and transformation, their uses in writing history and their relationship to written texts. He shows that any distinction between oral and written traditions of a historical nature is largely irrelevant, and that the South Sulawesi chronicles, which can be found only for a small number of kingdoms, are not characteristic (as historians have argued) but exceptional in the corpus of indigenous South Sulawesi historical sources. The book will be of primary interest to scholars of pre-European-contact Southeast Asia, including historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, linguists and geographers, and scholars with a broader interest in oral tradition and the relationship between the oral and written registers.

Song Blue and White Porcelain on the Silk Road disproves received opinion that pre-Ming blue and white dates to the Yuan (1279-1368 A.D.) and establishes the proper foundation for 21st century study of ancient Chinese porcelain.