FILM

The Archaeological Institute of American, Houston presents a Film Screening: The Sultan's Lost Treasure, Sunday, February 13 in the  MFAH, Brown Auditorium.

Follow divers and archaeologists at work at the site of a Ming shipwreck off the coast of Brunei. Go behind the scens on board the ship that served as dive headquarters and see how archaeologists work to preserve the thousands of artifacts recovered.

In the middle of the South China Seas, a six-hour voyage from the tiny, oil-rich Sultanate of Brunei, prospectors spot an ancient wreck on the sea bed, half-swallowed up by the sand. An international team of archaeologists dives far down and begins retrieving a unique treasure—not gold or silver, but more than 12,000 intact pieces of Chinese procelain dating from the "golden age" of ceramic production in the 14th Century A.D.

The priceless cargo poses countless riddles as the archaeologists seek the identity of the ship and its destination, and the meaning of the strange symbols so delicately figured on the dishes. And as the divers salvage the wreck in the teeth of pirates, looters, and the "bends," they also gradually reconstruct the story of the world's first international trading network - the ultimate ancestor of today's global marketplace.

Following the film screening, attend a dragon dance in the lobby of the Caroline Weiss Law Building to celebrate the start of the year of the rabbit.