Journal of Maritime Archaeology最新文献

Abstract

Rice cultivation on southern plantation landscapes was a mainstay and major cash crop along the southeast coastal region of the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The workforce involved in growing rice was primarily enslaved Africans and freed African Americans of the Gullah Geechee culture, whose ancestors were forcibly brought over from West Africa, often due to their superior knowledge of rice cultivation. Today, in the tidal regions of major rivers from Florida to North Carolina, the vestiges of complex canal and waterway systems engineered for rice cultivation are still evident today. Within these systems, there are various wood-built, water-control structures in the form of structural dike supports, floodgates and sluices, levee repairs, bulkheads and boat landings. In this study, a combination of visual observations using non-motorized vessels, combined with a customized side scan sonar system designed specifically for shallow water surveys, was used to identify and map dozens of artifacts within the shallow canal and waterway systems of Eagles Island, North Carolina, where there is historical evidence of significant rice growing in the region. The study focused on the northern third of the island, where rice fields are essentially intact, and was designated Eagles Island Rice District. The results of the 2-year study identified 45 rice-related archaeological structures being discovered, in addition to a nineteenth century watercraft. The novel and effective survey techniques employed in this study can be adopted elsewhere within the southeastern United States to locate, map and preserve the knowledge and engineering expertise of the Gullah Geechee, upon whom the region’s economic success depended.

This study demonstrates the successful use of a single-channel chirp system mounted on an Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) for detecting and mapping a partly buried medieval ship found in water approximately one meter (m) deep in a dynamic, intertidal environment at Avaldsnes, south-western Norway. The ASV's fast mobilization and access to areas otherwise difficult to reach, makes it an efficient, low-cost, and non-invasive platform for examining the seafloor and subsurface with high-resolution seismic data, acquired in a dense grid. Line spacing of 0.25 m allowed for the generation of a detailed 3D data cube, enabling effective interpretation of both acoustic vertical sections and horizontal amplitude maps. This approach empowered accurate identification of the outline of the wooden hull and provided information about ship dimensions and maximum burial depth. Structural elements observed in the geophysical datasets, including the keelson, raiders, and maststep, corroborates with findings from previous diving investigations and photogrammetry documentation. Moreover, the geophysical survey offers valuable additional knowledge of the buried ship remains, revealing a slight tilt of the keel and a substantial object buried in close proximity to the stern, probably the rudder or another wreck-related artefact.

Compared to the study of shipwrecks, the investigation of submerged aircraft is relatively recent in underwater archaeology. With the passing of time and the addition of World War II (WWII) sites to historical registers, the inclusion of aircraft in the Sunken Military Craft Act of 2004, and the continued expansion of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency’s (DPAA) mission to recover lost pilots and crew, these studies have become increasingly important to a variety of stakeholders. Site formation process (SFP) studies stipulate that a crucial aspect of the accurate investigation and interpretation of a site first requires a thorough understanding of the processes that created and subsequently altered the site. For terrestrial archaeologists and maritime archaeologists studying shipwreck sites, a well-established database of such knowledge already exists. For submerged aircraft, however, this database is small, yet growing. This paper will contribute to the understanding and interpretation of submerged aircraft sites through the study of the processes that created and subsequently affected a submerged WWII-era PB2Y Coronado aircraft located in Tanapag Lagoon, Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Archaeological and historical evidence is examined through the lens of SFP studies to identify the specific aircraft, determine its cause of crash, and understand cultural and natural factors that have impacted the site and may affect it today.

The practice of nocturnal navigation in the Mediterranean Sea could be inferred from both archaeological and written records. While there is sufficient proof that the ships and their crew were quite familiar with nighttime sailing, current scholarship has not satisfactorily investigated how the reduction of visibility could have affected the nautical practice. For this reason, the aim of this contribution is twofold: (1) to evaluate to what extent visibility was reduced at night, and (2) to understand what kind of strategies (if any) could be put in place to overcome the difficulties of a low level of visibility. Amongst the strategies, we will also assess the impact on visibility of fixed and portable lighting devices, such as torches and pierced amphoras, as documented by the archaeological and literary evidence.

In recent decades geoarchaeological techniques have increasingly been used to document archaeological remains in terrestrial and underwater sites. However, the archaeological record in submerged caves lacks systematic documentation techniques, due to difficulties of the environment and time limitations. These methodological constraints may result in incomplete documentation of an archaeological site and its artifacts. In the present work, we aim to combine geoarchaeological techniques, photogrammetry, topography, and manual surveying to geolocate archaeological remains dated to the Roman period of Mallorca (30 BCE [Before Common Era] and 70 Common Era (CE), in one of the most important submerged sites in Europe, the Font of Ses Aiguades cave in Alcúdia (Mallorca). An innovative methodological protocol based on non-intrusive surveying was applied to improve the historical, topographical, and archaeological knowledge of the cave. Here we propose a fast, rigorous, and economic documentation protocol for the generation of a georeferenced database of submerged archaeological remains. We also demonstrate the superior cost/benefit balance of generating a georeferenced photogrammetric three-dimensional model of a site versus manually calculating the geopositions of underwater archaeological artifacts. This study also corroborates the efficacy and accuracy of photogrammetry versus manual measurement.