Exchanges and Transformations in Gendered Medicine on the Maritime Silk Road: Evidence from the Thirteenth-Century Java Sea Wreck

Abstract

The Java Sea Wreck collection housed at The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago contains the excavated cargo of a wrecked thirteenth-century trading vessel found off the Indonesian coast (Figure 2.1) . Excavated in 1996, the artifacts from the wreck represent a cross-section of goods traded across the span of the Indian Ocean world (IOW) and beyond, linking communities in East Africa, the Middle East, and South, Southeast, and East Asia. The Java Sea Wreck artifacts shed light on the cultural exchanges along water routes that have come to be known as the Maritime Silk Road or Porcelain Road¹ owing to coastal China’s dominance in the production of porcelain in the period (Figure 2.2) . Setting sail during the interstitial transition between the Southern Song (1127–1279 CE) and Yuan Dynasties (1271–1368 CE) and carrying a load heavy with ceramics, the ill-fated Java Sea Wreck vessel likely embarked from the Chinese port city of Quanzhou in Fujian province during the late thirteenth century.²