Potsherds and Pragmatism: One Collector?s Perspective
Ideally every strake and rudder gudgeon should be recorded and analyzed in situ to ensure that no scrap of potential information is overlooked. The same is true of the equipment and cargo. Each barrel stave and tea bowl (of which the Geldermalsen yielded several thousand) should be mapped and studied in place, the packaging being deemed as important as the pots (fig. 31). But in underwater recovery, ideals and reality can be many bubbles apart. The cost of even shallow wreck diving becomes incredibly expensive incredibly fast, and only investors who expect a return for their money are willing to bankroll such expeditions. Not surprisingly, their diving director?s mandate is to do the best that is possible in the shortest time.
I have hesitated to use the word ?salvage,? knowing that every archaeologist blanches at the sound of it. But having begun my career as the Guildhall Museum?s salvage archaeologist, I am satisfied that I was doing the best I could with the limited time and resources available to me. My better-supported successors have been generous enough to allow that had I not done what I did?selective and minimalistically focused as it had to be?much that is now appreciated would have been lost. Similarly, had not Captain Michael Hatcher?s salvage company brought up the Geldermalsen?s huge cargo, we would today know far less about mid-eighteenth-century Chinese export porcelain than we do. The opportunity to see the unpacked wares ranged along Christie?s Amsterdam shelves, much as they would have been seen in the V.O.C.?s Canton factory by the Dutch merchants of 1751, was in itself a unique educational experience (fig. 32).
In an impassioned but carefully reasoned assault on virtually everyone associated with the Geldermalsen project and her cargo?s subsequent sale, ceramic historian George Miller described the site as being ?strip-mined? and ?scavenged,? and Christie?s as ?the major force in the destruction? of the wreck. Having condemned the very idea of selling its porcelain, Miller went on to say this:
Some archaeologists might argue that Geldermalsen would never have been excavated by professional archaeologists because of the logistics involved. However, any wreck that produces $16 million at an auction could have been funded for legitimate excavation.24
The thrust of this argument seems to imply that if professional archaeologists could have been assured of selling the cargo for big bucks, they would have been able to secure the financing for the wreck?s excavation and the porcelain?s recovery.
Hatcher was quoted in Reader?s Digest as saying that his team had been engaged in ?a race against time to get what they could before being interrupted by weather, rivals, pirates or some government.?25 The statement has been seen as an admission that he knew the wreck to be in someone?s territorial waters and that his expressed fears were otherwise unfounded. However, Hatcher?s next salvage venture was to justify them all. In 1992, though in no one?s territorial waters, the largely stoneware cargo of a Chinese junk from the twelfth century was seized by Thai naval personnel and not seen again until pieces from it were reported on sale in Bangkok markets. The aborted expedition had cost close to a million dollars. Whether the outcome would have been any different had Hatcher?s divers been professional archaeologists is anyone?s guess.
The High Seas seizure of the twelfth-century cargo had deprived students of the opportunity to analyze either the state of early Oriental stoneware art or the trading practices of shippers in that remote period. Measured against this yardstick, therefore, the fate of the Geldermalsen?s relatively recent porcelain was much to be preferred. The ship was excavated in the spring of 1985, and almost exactly a year later a 272-page catalog with 115 color photographs (some showing a dozen or more items) was available to anyone interested in Chinese porcelain. The year 1986 also saw the publication of C. J. A. J?rg?s well-illustrated The Geldermalsen History and Porcelain. Never in the history of underwater recovery had the results been so quickly and so thoroughly published. Yet archaeological critics still cried foul! They condemned Christie?s for the sale as well as any and every purchaser?on the grounds that money derived from the auction would be used by Hatcher and his team to go back and ?loot? another wreck for profit. Wrecks, the buyers were scolded, are a nonrenewable resource and once disturbed could never be put back together. They should be left until professional archaeologists have the time and money to do the job properly.26
Writing for the Washington Post in the context of the Titanic debate, reporter Michael Fletcher correctly stated that ?to many historians, the contributions that the sunken vessels can make to the understanding of world history are even more valuable than gold. And they want to ensure that history is not lost in the scramble for riches.?27 But what, we may wonder, are the legitimate contributions that make recovery acceptable?
A French wreck of ca. 1760 found amid Bermuda reefs was excavated over a period of eight years and yielded no gold but thousands of fragments of French ceramics that provided an unparalleled time capsule of common stonewares, lead-glazed earthenwares, and faience in use at that date (fig. 33). Working under a license from the Bermudian government, the diver fulfilled his obligation to offer the artifacts to it at a fair price (in this case, the cost of excavation), but had his offer rejected on the grounds that the sherds were not recovered by professional archaeologists and therefore were deemed worthless. Freed of his legal commitment, the disgusted salvager threatened to throw the whole lot back into the sea.
Examples like this drive an ever deeper wedge between ?go by the book? scholars and would-be ?do it right? amateurs and commercial salvagers.28 So, with neither side always right or always wrong, it seems time for an international agreement calling on each country to appoint licensing committees evenly balanced between social and maritime historians, archaeologists, commercial salvagers, museum curators, representatives of the tax-paying public, and, yes, even collectors, to determine the expected educational worth of every proposed wreck-disturbing project. In some instances the need for information about a ship?s construction would take precedence; in others it could be the armament, the cargo, or even the source of the ballast. One would hope that on a case-by-case basis the tenets of ideology versus pragmatism would be debated and adjudicated?leaving the wreck undisturbed being one of the several options.
In theory, the knowledge-seeking and protecting purists are absolutely right, but a realist might be forgiven for arguing otherwise. The doubtlessly unintentional ?worthier than thou? posture supposes (a) that at some future Utopian date sufficient money will be forthcoming, and (b) that it does not matter that our generation is to be denied information (incomplete though it may be) made possible by the recovery of cargoes like that of the Geldermalsen. The same realist might contend that future generations are likely to become even more philistine and that Man?s brief evolution and existence on the planet will soon self-terminate, leaving it strewn with his unstudied garbage. Aesop?s ancient fount of common sense had this to say:
Most Men are so inclin?d to private Gains,
That ?till the Power of Justice them contrains,
They?ll rather useless hoard, than part with what
May beneficial be to th? Publick State.29
An obvious solution to this pedagogic impasse would be for Hatcher and others like him to add professional and practical archaeologists to their teams to record so much about ship structural remains as budgets and on-site time allow. Unfortunately, so seemingly Solomon-like a solution is unworkable because any professional archaeologists associating themselves with a salvage project would be ostracized from their profession and have their air hoses confiscated.30
On land, as underwater, the need is for amateurs to be freed from the stigma of the ?pot hunter? or wreck looter, to work alongside the professionals for the good and enlightenment of both. In the field of ceramic studies there is much to be done to help better understand what pottery and porcelain can tell us about their manufacture, marketing, transportation, and usage. Some analyses call for quantification (though numbers can be misleading), others for the study of on-site distribution, and more for correlation with import records, sales ledgers, and household inventories. In short, ceramics are words ripped from the pages of history, and when properly recorded and reassembled, they have the ability to excite, amaze, and delight. I firmly believe that those sensations are most acutely experienced by collecting?by having and holding these historical bridges, and by living with them until we ourselves are consigned to the clay from which they sprang.
Ivor No?l Hume
Ideally every strake and rudder gudgeon should be recorded and analyzed in situ to ensure that no scrap of potential information is overlooked. The same is true of the equipment and cargo. Each barrel stave and tea bowl (of which the Geldermalsen yielded several thousand) should be mapped and studied in place, the packaging being deemed as important as the pots (fig. 31). But in underwater recovery, ideals and reality can be many bubbles apart. The cost of even shallow wreck diving becomes incredibly expensive incredibly fast, and only investors who expect a return for their money are willing to bankroll such expeditions. Not surprisingly, their diving director?s mandate is to do the best that is possible in the shortest time.
I have hesitated to use the word ?salvage,? knowing that every archaeologist blanches at the sound of it. But having begun my career as the Guildhall Museum?s salvage archaeologist, I am satisfied that I was doing the best I could with the limited time and resources available to me. My better-supported successors have been generous enough to allow that had I not done what I did?selective and minimalistically focused as it had to be?much that is now appreciated would have been lost. Similarly, had not Captain Michael Hatcher?s salvage company brought up the Geldermalsen?s huge cargo, we would today know far less about mid-eighteenth-century Chinese export porcelain than we do. The opportunity to see the unpacked wares ranged along Christie?s Amsterdam shelves, much as they would have been seen in the V.O.C.?s Canton factory by the Dutch merchants of 1751, was in itself a unique educational experience (fig. 32).
In an impassioned but carefully reasoned assault on virtually everyone associated with the Geldermalsen project and her cargo?s subsequent sale, ceramic historian George Miller described the site as being ?strip-mined? and ?scavenged,? and Christie?s as ?the major force in the destruction? of the wreck. Having condemned the very idea of selling its porcelain, Miller went on to say this:
Some archaeologists might argue that Geldermalsen would never have been excavated by professional archaeologists because of the logistics involved. However, any wreck that produces $16 million at an auction could have been funded for legitimate excavation.24
The thrust of this argument seems to imply that if professional archaeologists could have been assured of selling the cargo for big bucks, they would have been able to secure the financing for the wreck?s excavation and the porcelain?s recovery.
Hatcher was quoted in Reader?s Digest as saying that his team had been engaged in ?a race against time to get what they could before being interrupted by weather, rivals, pirates or some government.?25 The statement has been seen as an admission that he knew the wreck to be in someone?s territorial waters and that his expressed fears were otherwise unfounded. However, Hatcher?s next salvage venture was to justify them all. In 1992, though in no one?s territorial waters, the largely stoneware cargo of a Chinese junk from the twelfth century was seized by Thai naval personnel and not seen again until pieces from it were reported on sale in Bangkok markets. The aborted expedition had cost close to a million dollars. Whether the outcome would have been any different had Hatcher?s divers been professional archaeologists is anyone?s guess.
The High Seas seizure of the twelfth-century cargo had deprived students of the opportunity to analyze either the state of early Oriental stoneware art or the trading practices of shippers in that remote period. Measured against this yardstick, therefore, the fate of the Geldermalsen?s relatively recent porcelain was much to be preferred. The ship was excavated in the spring of 1985, and almost exactly a year later a 272-page catalog with 115 color photographs (some showing a dozen or more items) was available to anyone interested in Chinese porcelain. The year 1986 also saw the publication of C. J. A. J?rg?s well-illustrated The Geldermalsen History and Porcelain. Never in the history of underwater recovery had the results been so quickly and so thoroughly published. Yet archaeological critics still cried foul! They condemned Christie?s for the sale as well as any and every purchaser?on the grounds that money derived from the auction would be used by Hatcher and his team to go back and ?loot? another wreck for profit. Wrecks, the buyers were scolded, are a nonrenewable resource and once disturbed could never be put back together. They should be left until professional archaeologists have the time and money to do the job properly.26
Writing for the Washington Post in the context of the Titanic debate, reporter Michael Fletcher correctly stated that ?to many historians, the contributions that the sunken vessels can make to the understanding of world history are even more valuable than gold. And they want to ensure that history is not lost in the scramble for riches.?27 But what, we may wonder, are the legitimate contributions that make recovery acceptable?
A French wreck of ca. 1760 found amid Bermuda reefs was excavated over a period of eight years and yielded no gold but thousands of fragments of French ceramics that provided an unparalleled time capsule of common stonewares, lead-glazed earthenwares, and faience in use at that date (fig. 33). Working under a license from the Bermudian government, the diver fulfilled his obligation to offer the artifacts to it at a fair price (in this case, the cost of excavation), but had his offer rejected on the grounds that the sherds were not recovered by professional archaeologists and therefore were deemed worthless. Freed of his legal commitment, the disgusted salvager threatened to throw the whole lot back into the sea.
Examples like this drive an ever deeper wedge between ?go by the book? scholars and would-be ?do it right? amateurs and commercial salvagers.28 So, with neither side always right or always wrong, it seems time for an international agreement calling on each country to appoint licensing committees evenly balanced between social and maritime historians, archaeologists, commercial salvagers, museum curators, representatives of the tax-paying public, and, yes, even collectors, to determine the expected educational worth of every proposed wreck-disturbing project. In some instances the need for information about a ship?s construction would take precedence; in others it could be the armament, the cargo, or even the source of the ballast. One would hope that on a case-by-case basis the tenets of ideology versus pragmatism would be debated and adjudicated?leaving the wreck undisturbed being one of the several options.
In theory, the knowledge-seeking and protecting purists are absolutely right, but a realist might be forgiven for arguing otherwise. The doubtlessly unintentional ?worthier than thou? posture supposes (a) that at some future Utopian date sufficient money will be forthcoming, and (b) that it does not matter that our generation is to be denied information (incomplete though it may be) made possible by the recovery of cargoes like that of the Geldermalsen. The same realist might contend that future generations are likely to become even more philistine and that Man?s brief evolution and existence on the planet will soon self-terminate, leaving it strewn with his unstudied garbage. Aesop?s ancient fount of common sense had this to say:
Most Men are so inclin?d to private Gains,
That ?till the Power of Justice them contrains,
They?ll rather useless hoard, than part with what
May beneficial be to th? Publick State.29
An obvious solution to this pedagogic impasse would be for Hatcher and others like him to add professional and practical archaeologists to their teams to record so much about ship structural remains as budgets and on-site time allow. Unfortunately, so seemingly Solomon-like a solution is unworkable because any professional archaeologists associating themselves with a salvage project would be ostracized from their profession and have their air hoses confiscated.30
On land, as underwater, the need is for amateurs to be freed from the stigma of the ?pot hunter? or wreck looter, to work alongside the professionals for the good and enlightenment of both. In the field of ceramic studies there is much to be done to help better understand what pottery and porcelain can tell us about their manufacture, marketing, transportation, and usage. Some analyses call for quantification (though numbers can be misleading), others for the study of on-site distribution, and more for correlation with import records, sales ledgers, and household inventories. In short, ceramics are words ripped from the pages of history, and when properly recorded and reassembled, they have the ability to excite, amaze, and delight. I firmly believe that those sensations are most acutely experienced by collecting?by having and holding these historical bridges, and by living with them until we ourselves are consigned to the clay from which they sprang.
Ivor No?l Hume
