The cohort’s visit in July 2024 to the Marine Heritage Gallery, a gallery managed by the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries in Jakarta, sparked conversation about the complexities surrounding the display. The Gallery features over three thousand commercially salvaged artefacts, recovered from the ninth-century Belitung, the tenth-century Cirebon, and the twelfth-century Pulau Buaya shipwreck. This collection raises questions about whose stories are being told, which voices are amplified, and what silence is being perpetuated. Collections salvaged for profit-making objectives are frequently criticised as problematic entities, prompting ethical concerns over their recovery, attribution and contextual authenticity. What’s more, showcasing them may lead to accusations of promoting treasure-hunting activities.
In managing underwater cultural heritage (UCH), Indonesia walks a tightrope between economic exploitation and preservation. The gap between the number of UCH sites and the availability of funding and skilled human resources remains a pressing challenge underpinning these policies. Indonesia continues to adopt a pragmatic approach by involving private enterprises in the salvage of shipwrecks and auctioning the cargo. This is a trade-off strategy, intending to generate revenue that can, in theory, support UCH management in the long run. Retrieving them from the seabed has been seen as an effort to democratise UCH and challenge traditional notions of UCH preservation, by fostering a collaborative approach that brings together public and private stakeholders.
However, this approach understates the reality that profit-driven salvage activities are difficult to reconcile with the preservation of UCH. Similar approaches have fallen short in other jurisdictions. For example, the commercial salvage of the Whydah (Elia 1996) and the Nuestra Senora de Atocha (Varmer 1999) in the United States illustrates how damage may be inflicted on shipwreck sites. Despite the limitations, cost-effective approaches to salvage are preferred, undermining the integrity of historical data. Effective UCH management requires more than a salvage policy. Too often overlooked are the necessary protocols for law enforcement, rigorous work standards and oversight, provision of adequate government resources, transparent regulations, and consistent implementation which must accompany any efforts to balance UCH preservation with commercial interests.
Resisting the urge to dive into these tangled landscapes of balancing Indonesia’s UCH management (for details on the complexities of Indonesian legislation as it relates to UCH see Hardioko 2017, Pearson 2022, Polkinghorne et al. 2024, Tioa-Bonatz 2016), this discussion focuses on the collections, which demand attention in their own right.
With over three thousand artefacts on display and hundreds of thousands in storage, the Marine Heritage Gallery faces a daunting curatorial challenge. Moreover, the way these objects are interpreted and displayed requires a deeper reflection on how Indonesia defines and presents its cultural heritage. The objects cannot be divorced from their cultural and historical identity. The artefacts embody profound cultural knowledge about origins, destinations, functional roles, technological advancements, and the economic, social and political dynamics between nations. Their significance as archaeological data cannot be ignored. However, as heritage-making within the walls of this museum unfolds, existential discourse arises about the shift of value, from commodified objects intended for sale to protected UCH assets. How is the heritage identity constructed? Can the Gallery negotiate the tension between preserving the objects and acknowledging the problematic context of their acquisition?
Unlike the cultural heritage sites of Borobudur, Prambanan or Cetho temples, which were likely conceived as heritage at the time of their construction, the commercially salvaged collections without a successful bid at auction, are often, if not always, conferred through retroactive heritage designation via legislation. Peter Howard (2003) describes this process of heritage identity formation as one that is “thrust upon them.” When objects have been designated as heritage by the state in this manner, their presentation might be contested. This contestation involves challenges in stakeholders’ priorities, transition from commodified artefacts to heritage assets and the reinforcement of new identity.
Given this, the complex power dynamics underlying their heritage assignment must be addressed, including critical reflection on intersecting historical significance, commercial interest, and priorities of institutions in managing heritage. The Marine Heritage Gallery, like all museums, is not a neutral space. It is entangled in a web of state and institutional interests that commodify UCH, shaping and constraining the ways in which the cultural significance of the collection is defined. Howard cautions that institutions like museums wield considerable epistemic authority. While this enables them to educate and raise awareness, they are also vulnerable to reinforcing existing power dynamics, affecting curatorial bias, representation, and narrative control. Consequently, determining which objects are worth preserving and which values merit amplification or silence poses a challenge for the Marine Heritage Gallery’s management.
Significant assessment frameworks, such as this one published by the Collections Council of Australia, offer valuable guidance to assess the historical significance of entire collections and individual components. Such tools help heritage professionals to develop communication materials for the public, unlocking the potential of objects and empowering communities to explore, connect, and understand the histories, cultures, and environments that shaped the objects. The efficacy and potency of this framework lie in its systematic process. First, it begins through the analysis of an object or collection, followed by an in-depth investigation of historical, provenance, and contextual origins. Subsequent steps involve comparisons with similar items, the consideration of cultural values against predetermined criteria, and a summary of meanings and values within a statement of significance. The framework is founded on four major criteria: historical, artistic, scientific or research potential, and social or spiritual significance. These parameters are augmented by four more comparative indicators that help contextualise the degree of significance: provenance, rarity or representativeness, condition or completeness, and interpretive capacity.
While significance assessments are useful, the complexity of commercially salvaged UCH at the Marine Heritage Gallery requires the incorporation of new criteria which endeavour to capture the multifaceted contemporary value and address the ethical concerns surrounding their salvage. A significance assessment guideline with UCH’s complexities in mind might include outlining the relationship of the Gallery’s objects with other objects and collections, contemporary issues, debate, and, finally, the potential for reinterpretation or recontextualization.
David Lowenthal (1985) illustrated that heritage is not a neutral or objective representation of the past but rather a selective interpretation that reflects the interests and values of the present. If this is the case, then we should recognise that the heritage designation of commercially salvaged collections of UCH must be understood beyond the objects themselves and encompass the complex and problematic circumstances surrounding acquisition, preservation, and interpretation.
References
Elia, R. J. (1992). The Ethics of Collaboration: Archaeologists and the Whydah Project. Historical Archaeology, 26(4), 105–117. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25616199
Hardjoko, H. (2017). Indonesian Maritime Cultural Resources Management: A Study of Salvaged Material Cultures from Historic Shipwreck Finds in Indonesia. Flinders University, School of Humanities and Creative Arts.
Howard, P. (2003). Heritage : management, interpretation, identity. Continuum. Pp. 247
Lowenthal, D. (1985). The Past Is a Foreign Country. Cambridge University Press, 1985. Pp. 410-412
Pearson, N. (2022). Resisting Internationalism?: The Evolution of Indonesia’s Shipwreck Legislation. Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land- En Volkenkunde, 178(4), 379–409. https://doi.org/10.1163/22134379-bja10044
Polkinghorne, M., Pearson, N., van Duivenvoorde, W., Nayati, W., Tahir, Z., Ridwan, N. N. H., Forrest, C., Tan, N. H., Popelka-Filcoff, R., Morton, C., Kowlessar, J., & Staniforth, M. (2024). Reuniting orphaned cargoes: Recovering cultural knowledge from salvaged and dispersed underwater cultural heritage in Southeast Asia. Marine Policy, 163, 106074 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2024.106074
Russell, R., Winkworth, K., & Collections Council of Australia. (2009). Significance 2.0 : a guide to assessing the significance of collections (2nd ed.). Collections Council of Australia.
Tjoa-Bonatz, Mai Lin (2016). Struggles over historic shipwrecks in Indonesia Economic versus preservation interests. Cultural Property and Contested Ownership. Routledge
Varmer, Ole (1999). The Case Against the “Salvage” of the Cultural Heritage. Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce, Vol. 30, No. 2, April, 1999