The wreck of the Amsterdam (1749) Archaeology of European economy in the eighteenth century

The Amsterdam is a ship of the Dutch United East India Company (VOC), which left the Dutch Republic in January 1749 for its maiden voyage to the East Indies. The newly build and fully equipped vessel was shortly after wrecked near Hastings on the south coast of England (Figura 1). In 1984-1986 the stern area of the wreck was investigated during a series of underwater archaeological test excavations. The Amsterdam became the focus point for further historical research into the socio-economic supply systems of the VOC shipyard in Amsterdam. The aim was to develop a contextual model to combine three levels of interpretations for the material culture of these long distance trading vessels; ship, yard, city. A shipwreck of the VOC such as the Amsterdam represents a rich source of information on the trade and production of the city of Amsterdam and its material culture systems in eighteenth century. Its data is relevant in an European context, as Amsterdam is in this period a crucial trading and shipping hub connected to all European regions. The Amsterdam offered a challenging option to extend the interpretation of each archaeological find from the shipwreck beyond the level of the individual ship because of the availability of archival sources on material purchases of the yard or on the identity and professions of suppliers of the Amsterdam VOC. The model enabled a connection between the material data from a maritime archaeological context and the historical persons which were involved in the production and supply of the yard where the Amsterdam was built. In this way, maritime archaeology added a material dimension to the world of merchants, craftsmen and shopkeepers dealing with European products in mid-eighteenth century Amsterdam, achieving an archaeological reconstruction of high biographical quality instead of the usual anonymous datasets.