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  • Mapping Majapahit: Wardenaar’s Archaeological Survey at Trowulan in 1815
  • Amrit Gomperts (bio), Arnoud Haag (bio), and Peter Carey1 (bio)

Old maps may exist for regions that identify now “lost” archaeological sites, and georeferencing will help archaeologists to relocate those sites.

— Sarah H. Parcak, Satellite Remote Sensing for Archaeology, 2009, p. 50.

On August 22, 1815, the lieutenant-governor of Java, Thomas Stamford Raffles (in office, 1811–16), ordered the army surveyor Captain Johannes Willem Bartholomeus Wardenaar (1785–1869) to make a plan of the site of the ancient capital of Majapahit at Trowulan (Illustration 1).2 Wardenaar produced a map, a map legend containing brief [End Page 177] descriptions of the monuments, and several drawings. He sent the originals to Raffles in late 1815 but did not keep a copy of the map.3 This map was subsequently considered lost. Wardenaar’s own copy of the legend and three sheets with drawings were handed over to the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen (Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences) in 1879.4 The text of both Wardenaar’s legend and his jotted notes on his drawings have been published by the mining engineer and pioneer of modern volcanology, Rogier Verbeek (1845–1926).5 Wardenaar’s Plan of Majapahit was subsequently traced by the present authors to the Drake Collection of the British Museum.6 This collection also includes copies of a few plates sent by Wardenaar to the British lieutenant-governor.7 In this article, we will discuss the importance of the 1815 map for present-day archaeologists of the Trowulan site.

Wardenaar’s Archaeological Survey of Trowulan in 1815

On the eve of the colonial annexation of the area, Lieutenant H. G. Jourdan prepared a report of the Wiråsåbå and Japan districts, dated April 28, 1813, in which he described the site of the medieval court-city:

Majapait, the ancient capital of the eastern empire is situated in Wirosobo, at the distance of about eight or ten miles. The site is now overrun with a thick bamboo jungle and few traces of this once extensive city are now to be discovered: idols, which prove that the art of sculpture had attained some degree of perfection have been dug up at different times near the spot, and there are still the remains of an edifice evidently of Hindoo construction. The natives retain a kind of superstitious reverence for these relics, which they are unable to explain but do not attempt to conceal. They regard the idols as representations of evil genie whose favor it is necessary to conciliate.8

According to the dates on his drawings, Wardenaar was at Trowulan between October 5 and 7, 1815. However, it must have taken the engineer captain several weeks to survey the extensive Trowulan site, which at the time was covered by thick bamboo [End Page 178] and teak forests. As a military surveyor, he would have had use of contemporary instruments such as a surveyor’s astrolabe, a plane table with an alidade, a compass, a sextant, and chains.9 The Plan of Majapahit at the British Museum is drawn on a scale of 1:12,000, and measures 42 by 35 centimeters. The spelling of names on the map suggests that this plan is an English copy, probably dating from late 1815 or early 1816.10

The geometrical faithfulness and planimetric accuracy of Wardenaar’s original survey was evident to the present authors when we imported a digital scan of the Plan of Majapahit onto Google Earth and projected it as a half transparent overlay on top of a high-resolution satellite image. 11 Using GPS mapping software, we were able to georeference the Plan of Majapahit with coordinates of ground-control points taken with GPS receivers, thus verifying the positions of the remains on site (Illustration 2). These ground-control points and site identifications are marked in the present article with angle brackets <...>. The corresponding coordinates are listed in the Appendix. The absolute positioning accuracy of the plan is 54 meters with respect to ground truth.12 The georeferencing also shows that the scale bar on the plan indicates Rijnlandse Roeden (i.e. Rhineland Rods) even...

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