Response: ‘The Discovery of New Zealand's oldest shipwreck’

Abstract

Based on the outcome of carbon dating wreck timbers found in New Zealand the article ‘The Discovery of New Zealand's oldest shipwreck-possible evidence of further Dutch exploration of the South Pacific’ in Volume 42 of the Journal of Archeological Science pp. 435–441 argues that the finds could be from an unknown early eighteenth century Dutch vessel sailing from the Dutch colonies in South–East Asia toward New Zealand. This response tries to explain why such a claim conflicts with the historical scholarship and therefore makes this attribution highly unlikely.