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Abstract
The 9th‐century‐AD Belitung wreck was discovered in 1998 in the Java Sea. Construction techniques rapidly confirmed that it was unlike any known Chinese or Southeast Asian vessel. The uncertainty about its origins was resolved in 2008 by timber identifications: it was constructed in the Middle East (probably Oman or Yemen). This paper, on the characterization of a dammar resin lump collected in the vicinity of the wreck, supplies additional evidence confirming the probable re‐stitching of the vessel somewhere in Asia.
© 2010 The Authors
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Dr. Bui Thi Mai and Dr Michel Girard (Laboratoire de Palynologie, Valbonne, France) for their kind co‐operation in the collection of fresh dammars and all the archaeologists who collected the samples of the South China Sea wrecks analysed for this study. We are very grateful to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the Deutsch‐Französische Hochschule/Université Franco‐Allemande (DFH/UFA) and the French Ministère de l'Education Nationale, de l'Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche (MENESR) for financial support through the International Research Training Group 532 (GRK 532). Finally, we thank the ANR for the support of the program ‘Archeomolecule’.