Belanakan wreck
More than 12 000 items of Chinese Ceramics were recovered from a shipwreck located about 50 km from Belanakan, West Java in Indonesia. The shipwreck lies at a depth of 58 meters in the Java Sea and measures 50 meters by 20 meters. Archaeologists believe that the blue and white wares originate from the Ming dynasty.
About 40 percent of the recovered artifacts, such as plates, bowls, jars and vases, are still in good condition and some of them seem to be of Swatow origin, others from Jingdezhen (known as the Porcelain capital since more than 1 700 years). The shipwreck and its cargo date to around mid-16th century from the Ming Jiajing period (1521-1567 AD).
Some of the pieces recovered from the shipwreck have since appeared in the Jakarta antique market, scattering this great historical testimony and preventing archaeologists from working on it.
