Underwater Archaeology Essay

Underwater Archaeology first began in the 19th century when John Deane and Charles Dean excavated the Mary Rose shipwreck (Papadopoulos). It is the scientific study, recording and interpretation of the past through the material culture and the remains of human activities that are lying in any aquatic environment. Before the invention of scuba gear, excavations predominately took place on land. Due to the vast differences in the environment surrounding excavations on water as compared to on land, different techniques and equipment must be used. These different techniques have different strengths and weaknesses. However, one main difference separates the two which is that underwater archaeology preserves the remains better providing more information
For example, the broken pottery that is found underwater usually consists of fragments the size of its original breaking. Whereas broken pottery found on land consists of tiny fragments due to many years of trampling. Perishable materials such as plant and animal remains are far better preserved under water than on land. This provides additional information because shipwrecks can be dated using dendrochronology which uses the timber of ships to date when the ship was built. Such remains also provide information on the area where the ship was built, which archaeologists may not have known had the remains been on land (Goggin 1960: 350). In certain cases, underwater ruins are easier to excavate than ruins on land because artifacts naturally come to the top of the sea bed or river bed. For example, tidal variations and dry summers in Ireland often lead to the exposure of remains that were buried under the ground (Connor 1989: 26). This is another example of how the cost of underwater archaeology may be reduced. There are certain parts of history that only underwater archaeology can provide information on such as the history of naval warfare. Naval warfare leads to destruction of submarines and ships. These shipwrecks contain important information about the period in which they were built. The information that these shipwrecks contain can only be acquired and preserved by
Scholarship has acknowledged that virtually all the evidence indicates a Levantine origin and an Aegean destination. For example, the type of stone anchors of the ship is common in the Levant, but not in the Aegean (Bass 1991: 74), and the quantity of Aegean transport vessels is minimal when compared to the huge number of Near Eastern pithoi and amphorae (Bachhuber 2006: 347). Another example is that a few tons of tin ingots were found at the shipwreck, which were most likely obtained through trade from Anatolia or regions east of Mesopotamia (Pulak 2008: 292). Tin was lacking in Cyprus, which supports the argument that tin ingots were shipped via the Levantine coast (Pulak 2001: 22). All of the used oil lamps recovered are of a Syro-Palestinian type, whereas the Cypriot oil lamps are unused and have been found packed in pithoi ready for export (Pulak 2001: