Vietnam's Shipwreck Coast
Latest update February 20, 2019 Started on February 20, 2019
Vietnam has been part of one of the worlds largest ancient maritime trade routes. Now two recently discovered sites, a group of 9th to 19th-century shipwrecks and Neolithic island burials, will help tell us more about this unknown history.
For over a decade Vietnam Maritime Archaeology Project, VMAP, has been involved with training Vietnamese archaeologists to become maritime archaeologists and help establish their Department of Maritime Archaeology. VMAP has initiated a variety of projects including the search for a 13th-century Mongol invasion fleet sunk by the Vietnamese to trying to find shipwrecks involved in the Maritime Silk Route trade. In 2019 two teams of self-funding volunteers will investigate sites recently found by VMAP. The first is a Neolithic site on an outer island of Ha Long Bay that may show that the people occupying this site were part of early island migration. The second is a bay in central Vietnam that has five shipwrecks from the 9th to the 19th that were carrying cargos of exquisite Chinese Ceramics.
