SEAArch - The Southeast Asian Archaeology Newsblog

Merry Christmas one and all! The SEAArch Podcast talks to Dr Dougald O’Reilly, the director of Heritage Watch, an NGO in Cambodia that seeks to preserve the cultural heritage of Cambodia. Dr O’Reilly talks about the work of Heritage Watch, the extent of looting of artefacts in Cambodia, and how you can help.

Hear (or download) the podcast on the SEAArch Podcast page.

IT’S FINALLY UP!!! Okay, not really… It’s been ready since a week ago, but I’ve been having technical difficulties which haven’t fully been resolved yet. But I’ve decided enough is enough, and to upload the podcast anyway. You can hear it at the podcast page.

19/11 Update: After tweaking every possibe setting, I finally found out what was going wrong with the MP3 encoding. You can now hear the podcast from the media player on the website!

02: Lenggong Archaeological Museum and Perak Man

The SEAArch podcast goes to Lenggong in Perak, Malaysia to check out the Lenggong Archaeological Museum and to also talk about the Perak Man, the oldest complete prehistoric skeleton found in this area.

I’ve just finished the second SEAArch podcast, but it won’t be uploaded for another day or two. After trying out several alternatives to host my media - as much as I want to, I don’t have a budget to pay for bandwidth and/or a dedicated server - so I’ve decided to create a site just devoted to the SEAArch podcasts. The podcast site, http://seaarch.podbean.com, has a pretty decent space and bandwidth limit for podcasters with limited budgets (ie: me). You’ll find the actual video and audio recordings there, but I’ll also post the podcast transcripts and any accompanying pictures on this both this and the podbean site.

Stay tuned - the second episode of the SEAArch podcast (on the Lenggong Archaeological Museum and the Perak Man) will be up in a few days. =)

The public lecture held at the Australian National University was mentioned before in an earlier post, and the recording of the lecture by Dr. Eusebio Dizon has been uploaded on the ANU website. You can download and listen in to the half-hour lecture by Dr Dizon. A pity that one can’t see the accompanying pictures. Note: this isn’t a SEAArch podcast - although one is currently in the making!

For more than 20 years, the National Museum of the Philippines has been conducting underwater archaeology in Philippine waters with international collaborators. In this lecture, Dr Eusebio Dizon discusses the shipwrecks uncovered by the museum, includin the fifteenth century Pandanan wreck, with its cargo of Chinese ceramics, which was accidentally discovered by a pearl farm diver off the coast of Pandanan Island in the southern Philippines. Another key discovery discussed is the wreck of the San Diego, a Spanish warship that sank off the waters of Fortune Island during a battle with a Dutch ship, the Mauritius in 1600.

Dr Eusebio Dizon is Head of the Underwater Archaeology Section and Curator I in the Archaeology Division, National Museum, Manila, Philippines. He has undertaken extensive fieldwork in both land and underwater archaeological exploration and excavation in the Philippines, United States, India and Southeast Asia.

Dr Dizon is also a Director of the Archaeological Studies Program in the University of the Philippines and a Professorial Lecturer at Ateneo de Manila and Santo Tomas Universities. He was awarded his PhD by the University of Pennsylvania in 1988.

This lecture was presented by the School of Archaeology and Anthropology, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences.

Related Books:
Lost at Sea: The Strange Route of the Lena Shoal Junk
Shipwrecks and Sunken Treasure in Southeast Asia by T. Wells

It’s the first SEAArch podcast! We go on-location to the Aquaria @ KLCC, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to bring you a first-hand look at the Treasures of the South China Sea exhibition, on now until the end of this month. Please leave comments and feedback!

Transcript

It’s a hazy day in Kuala Lumpur, and we are on our way to the KLCC where the famous Petronas towers are standing. The Petronas towers are currently the tallest buildings in the world, but we’re not going up the towers today, instead we are heading underground and back in time.

The Treasures of the South China Sea exhibition at the Aquaria is a rare chance to get up close and personal with artefacts dating as far back as one thousand years. Organised by Nanhai Marine Archaeology and supported by the Malaysia Department of Museums, the exhibition showcases artefacts retrieved from ten shipwrecks found in the waters of Malaysia.

In chronological order, the ten shipwrecks are: The Tanjung Simpang, Turiang, Nanyang, Longquan, Royal Nanhai, Xuande, Singtai, Wanli, Anantes and Desaru. The wrecks are named arbitrarily, sometimes named after their present locations and at other times named after some characteristic feature. They date from the 10th century right up to the 19th century and cover the Chinese dynasties of Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing.

Most of the pieces in the exhibition are on sale and collectors interested in owning a piece of history might be interested in buying a gong, a bowl or a pair of spoons from the Desaru shipwreck. For my part – and my meagre budget – I got a miniature celadon jarlet retrieved from the Royal Nanhai wreck that dates to around 1450. I also bought a book on Malaysian Shipwrecks.

The company behind the retrieval of these artefacts, Nanhai Marine Archaeology, works very closely with the Malaysian Department of Museums. Sten Sjostrand, the principle investigator and founder of the company sees himself as a marine archaeologist rather than a treasure hunter or antique dealer. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to speak with him when I was there, but from what I hear, he’s really passionate about his work and so hopefully we can hear from him in another podcast.

The Museums Department gets its choice of artefacts and 30% of the retrieved finds, and the remaining 70% are sold by the company. The money raised is used to fund future marine expeditions. This exhibition is special, however, because it may be one of the last ever and so if you have the time, you should make the trip down because Mr Sjostrand is said to be retiring.

The Treasures of the South China Sea Exhibition is on at the Aquaria at KLCC until the end of October. For more information, you can visit Nanhai Marine Archaeology’s website at www.mingwrecks.com and don’t forget to visit the SEAArch website at S-E-double A-R-C-H dot wordpress dot com for a full transcript of this podcast and more news and resources on the archaeology of Southeast Asia.

Music for this podcast was by Gamelan Nyai Saraswati from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can send your comments, feedback and suggestions to seaarch@gmail.com. Until next time, this is Noel signing off for the SEAArch podcast.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

Related Books:
- Shipwrecks and Sunken Treasure in Southeast Asia by T. Wells
- Oriental trade ceramics in Southeast Asia, 10th to 16th century: Selected from Australian collections, including the Art Gallery of South Australia and the Bodor Collection by J. Guy