Page 381 - Green - Maritime Archaeology: A Technical Handbook. 2nd ed

360 Maritime Archaeology: A Technical Handbook, Second Edition
have survived, but they are very helpful in indicating disposition of cargoes among the ships of the fleets. Finally, in the resolutions of the Heren XVII, there are some lists of requisitions from the Indies and of goods shipped on the various fleets, but these tend to deal only with major items.
Another component in the inventory of items to be found on a company ship and, perhaps, the most difficult to estimate, is the private possessions that the crew, soldiers, and passengers brought onboard. Individuals going to the Indies were allowed by the Heren XVII to take with them a pre- scribed amount of goods. The volume of things was limited to a chest of dimensions specified by the Artyckel Brief of the VOC, and could include food, a small amount of money, and some trade goods. There may well have been a much larger quantity of smuggled goods and, certainly, there is evi- dence that the company became very concerned about this illegal trade. However, the quantity of trade goods of this nature would have been small in comparison with the overall cargo.
Finally, there is the ship itself with masts, rigging, sails, anchors, guns, etc. Surprisingly little is known about the building and construction of ships for the company. The resolutions of the Heren XVII contain specifications for building a particular ship and defining its class; from time to time, the spec- ifications for the various classes would change.
Thus it can be seen that there are an extremely diverse and complex group of documents available that may help to identify the type of items found on a VOC shipwreck. These lists are an invaluable source of infor- mation about the complex society of trades and skills that existed on the ships and the function of the vessels themselves. All this information is obvi- ously indispensable for the maritime archaeologist working on the wrecks of such ships.
V. EXPERIMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY: RECONSTRUCTIONS, REPLICAS, AND MODELS
Over the past few years there have been an increasing number of mar- itime archaeological projects which come under the general heading of experimental archaeology. These include two basic approaches: (1) one where the work is centered around conducting a series of experiments to answer a particular problem, and (2) one where the work involves building a replica of the original, either as a scale model or at full scale, in order to study methods of construction (see McGrail, 1977).