Rethinking Shipwreck Archaeology: A History of Ideas and Considerations for New Directions

Lenihan, Daniel

INTRODUCTION: The term Underwater Archeology encompasses a number of very distinct research foci with only one unifying element--the use of underwater technology. This has created a semantic and a conceptual problem in terms of communication with the terrestrial archeological community. The other subdisciplines of archeology are distinguished by geographical area (e.g., Plains, Southwestern), or subject matter (e.g., prehistoric, historic). The only exception to this rule is underwater archeology which is a distinction, based solely on technique. This immediately creates a curious credibility problem with the rest of the profession. If any archeologist can put on a scuba tank and do underwater archeology, what then is an underwater archeologist? It would seem this individual is either an archeological technician whose only qualification is that he can dive, or a super archeologist who can practice archeology on Spanish shipwrecks, early man sites, Mayan cenotes, Phoenician trading vessels or Anasazi ruins submerged in Southwestern reservoirs. In reality, the individuals within the American archeological community who are referred to as underwater archeologists compose a group that encompasses a whole spectrum of highly variable skills and research interests. This ranges from well-established prehistorians such as John Goggin to classical archeologists, historians, specialists in submerged cultural resource management and treasure hunter/adventurers. It has been only in the last two years that papers by commercial treasure hunters were explicitly excluded from meetings of the International Conference on Underwater Archeology.... Shipwreck archeology, as it exists today, derived its roots from several distinct sources including marine salvage, maritime history, classical archeology and cultural resources management. It has been almost totally disregarded, however, by traditional American archeologists who are grounded in anthropology. This probably represents a knee-jerk negative reaction to an aspect of the archeological data base that seems to be tainted by "gold and glory" or which has been traditionally the domain of the historical particularist. The result has been a case of academic tunnel vision of amazing proportions. Like many other new thrusts in American archeology, the first serious efforts to consider shipwreck sites from an anthropological perspective has come from agency archeologists responsible for cultural resources management. Archeologists responsible for developing protection or mitigation programs for resources on submerged lands in marine parks, rivers and harbors were forced by law to address this issue. Unlike others who had come up against the question of shipwrecks as data sources, these people were not historians, curators or salvors, but rather products of anthropology departments. As a result of this rather confusing past, proposals for new directions for underwater archeology in the present must be predicated on an understanding of the complex ideational milieu in which it developed. In other words, in order to know where we are and what we can do, it is necessary to know where we've been. We will examine first the historical development of shipwreck archeology seeking an understanding of its isolation from the anthropological mainstream, then offer some thoughts on the anthropological potential of shipwrecks.