The Siren of Cirebon (a tenth-century trading vessel lost in the Java Sea)

This book examines data collected during the salvage of the cargo of a merchant vessel foundered in the Java Sea, by a short inscription in a fragment of a bowl and coins dated to around 970 CE. The wreck's position indicates that the ship was on her way to the island of Java; the vessel herself belongs into the so called lashed-lug and doweled', Western Austronesian ('Malayo-Indonesian') tradition of boat-building. The surviving cargo ranges from Chinese stonewares and Southeast Asian ceramics to Middle Eastern glassware, tin and lead from -proposedly- the Malay Archipelago, and a wide variety of "smaller finds", most of which can be attributed to the broader area of the western Indian Ocean.

The find palpably demonstrates the far-reaching and well-institutionalised trade rela-tions throughout early medieval Asia. It is often assumed that pre-modern Asian commerce was largerly organised in small-scale ventures, the so called "pedlar trade", and a number of sources indicate structural features of the ships facilitating this commerce that could have supported such a "particularised" exchange. However, a critical assessment of the compisition and distribution of the ship's payload and a virtual reconstruction of the ship and her initial loading pattern reveal that the vessel's ceramic cargo in all probability was not acquired, handled, and bound to be marketed as a particularised "pedding" venture, but managed by a single authority. The huge amount of ceramics carried on the vessel raises questions regarding frequency, volume and modus operandi of maritime exchanges in tenth-century Southeast Asia, implying that the ship's tragic voyage was but an attempt at instituting a virtual monopoly in such trade.