Bachhuber visit

For our next guest (and our last for a bit - we get some breathing room), we will welcome Christoph Bachhuber on Monday October 3rd. While an expert in many things, it is particularly his experience as an underwater archaeologist that we will be going after. He even worked on Uluburun - the mother of all underwater shipwreck sites. He has given us an article to read; you can find it on the Readings page. Please have it read by Monday's class.

Post questions below!

What made you go into underwater archaeology? And, what do you find to be the most difficult or challenging aspect of underwater archaeology? -Jordan Murphy

How do you first go about identifying or finding an underwater site to excavate? Is there a type of "land surveying" that can be used for bodies of water? Sarah Shrader

How do you catalog and map your finds underwater? Is there a GIS capable of underwater excavations? - Alex Salter

How does the development of ROVs fit into the future of underwater archaeology, both in terms of mapping and physical extraction? Can they ever be a primary means to study underwater artifacts, or will they always serve a complementary role? -Ned Horton

How is movement of underwater sites due to drifting in currents taken into account? Do artifacts from shipwrecks tend to stay relatively close together, or drift far apart? How useful is local lore in finding an underwater site? - Max Lesser

You mention that no epigraphic record is available from the Uluburun ship. Are texts ever preserved underwater? Can stratigraphic analysis be used underwater, or do you have to rely on other dating methods? Was seafaring in the Mediterranean only affordable for the elite class, or could lower-class merchants travel by sea? - David Storch

What are the types of artifacts that do not stand up to underwater conditions and therefore are difficult or impossible to recover in underwater archeology? Do you think it is possible for ground and water archeology to be biased in their understandings of cultures because of the types of artifacts they find a majority of the time? - Laurel Mattos

What are some of the precautions you have to take for underwater archaeology that is different from ground archaeology? When artifacts are taken out of the water what kind of care does it need to go through so that they don't get ruined by air? -Ayano Kondo

With the inherently cross-cultural nature of shipwreck sites, are conclusions harder to draw about a particular culture due to the varied nature of artifacts? You mention the shipwreck could have had political reverberations from cargo not reaching its destination. Are there other instances in which the textual record states that this happened? -Ann Ford

What is known about how this ship sank? Is that usually known about an underwater archaeological site, and if it is, how pertinant is that information to the excavation and context of the site? -Harry Caulfield

Posted at Oct 01/2011 05:28PM:
How are artifacts found underwater preserved? Is it common for these artifacts to be cleaned or are they left as they are found? Do temperature change and pressure change ever have a huge affect on the artifacts? - Connor Hilton

Posted at Oct 01/2011 08:35PM:
Did trade play a large role in the economies of the various polities of the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean? Or was the trade/gift exchange that is exemplified in the Ulu Burun ship more political in nature? - Andrew Waters

When excavating on land it is common practice to set aside part of a site for later archaeologists (who have different questions and more advanced technologies and methods). Is it possible or practical to do this with underwater archaeology? How does this affect your approach to excavation? - Kate Logue

How often does underwater archaeology provide enough evidence to draw fairly definitive conclusions about a site? Or is it more often unclear or ambiguous, as it was with Uluburun, because of the lack of conclusive evidence? -Julia Kelly

Do you think there are any other skills that help with underwater archaeology? a language? -Julia Carrellas

How does water affect the preservation of organic materials other than wood? In underwater archaeology, how rare is it to find bodies that are well preserved? How long does wood last underwater before breaking down into an unrecognizable and unusable state? - Andrew Kaplan

Posted at Oct 02/2011 03:47PM:
d.bennett: What are the similarities and differences between the conclusions that generally can be drawn from underwater and land archeology? For example, finding a shipwreck might tell you about the movement of people, but the excavation of a settlement will tell you something different. What are the connections between the two, and how do you draw them? - Donald Bennett

Posted at Oct 02/2011 04:30PM:
#Ryan Fugate: Ryan Fugate: When a shipwreck is found with such a wide variety of artifacts, including both cargo and personal effects, we know that they were all on board at the same time when it sunk. But is there any way for us to determine the ownership of any of the artifacts other than speculation and supposition? Does their placement in the wreck give us any clue as to their nature (found in a captain's cabin, etc)? And beyond individuals, is it possible to draw specific cultural conclusions from the artifacts, or is what we find so varied that conclusions must be vague by nature?

Posted at Oct 02/2011 05:07PM:
#TMOlson: Do you know what caused the Uluburun ship to sink? And have you found any records on land about the ship?

In your conclusion you say, "This cargo wouldhave had lasting effects on the economic well-being,and probably also the political climate, of the intendedrecipient." How important was the cargo on this ship in comparison to others?

Also, while you must take special precautions when retrieving artifacts in underwater sites as opposed to land sites, what are the precautions you must take to ensure the safety of the excavators themselves?

Posted at Oct 02/2011 06:54PM:
#Laura B: Can the material culture of life on a ship (not just cargo) be reliably matched to any one land-based culture? Is there any sort of separate 'culture' of naval life which underwater archaeology can inform?

Sophia Diaz: How can the hypothesis described throughout the entire paper (the whole Uluburun voyage being a political or diplomatic visit between cultures) be considered a legitimate hypothesis if its foundations are all based on "ambiguous evidence" (page 4)? How does one go about piecing together these seemingly disparate pieces of (mostly ambiguous) information (the textual evidence of around the same time, the shipwreck itself, the varying artifacts--both personal and official, etc.) and synthesize them together to be part of the same story?

The assumption that there were two individuals on board was based on the pairs of items found together, but was a crew of two people sufficient to run a ship carrying 11+tons of cargo? What were other ships like in this period?-Colin Schofield

Posted at Oct 02/2011 11:51PM:
How does the issue of context differ in underwater archaeology? Is there some kind of stratigraphy associated with a site like a shipwreck, or is the artifact's location on the ship the primary focus? How is context recorded or determined? - Siri Olson

Posted at Oct 03/2011 10:26AM:
#Lauren Pierce: When you have found an underwater site, do you survey it? If so, how does this survey compare to land survey?

Posted at Oct 03/2011 11:11AM:
#Karina Alventosa: How do you account for the water distortion in your surveying? Do the survey points taken on land always directly correlate to the places you are excavating under the water? If there is a cave, do you survey inside the cave or above it?

Posted at Oct 03/2011 11:14AM:
#Jessica Claflin: how do your methods of excavation and recording differ for an underwater shipwreck and one on land? What methods of preservation have you found work best on underwater wrecks? For example: what do you treat the wood with?

Odalmy Molina: There are various hypotheses as to the type of people that could have been on board in the Uluburun. Could other nearby and contemporary shipwrecks such as the Gelindoya shed more insight in the nature of Aegean/Near Eastern trade and the Uluburun shipwreck? 2.) Could the possiblity that the Uluburun shipwreck was Aeagan in origin and that Ugarit, a "Hittite vassal," was a possible destination reveal an attempt at reconciliation between the Aegean people and the Hittites in trade?

Posted at Oct 03/2011 11:17AM:

Christina Ho:
Are there often artifacts found around the site of the shipreck, not in the ship itself?

Are shiprecks better preserved depending on how deep the ship had fallen? For example, are ships that are on the floor of an especially deep section better preserved than the ones that are relatively closer to the surface?

What is best undersea environment for preservation?

Are there shipreck sites that you know about but are unable to access? if so, why?

Posted at Oct 03/2011 01:15PM:
L. Bestock: My almost 5-year old daughter, with whom I was discussing this last night, wants to know how you write notes underwater.

Posted at Oct 03/2011 01:38PM:
#Abouche: Adam Bouche asks about underwater archaeology:

What amount and kinds of materials usually survive and how long? I figure most of the copper and iron are oxidized to the point of destruction, but what happens to relatively unreactive silver and gold? You said pomegranates were found, were they not decayed?

Posted at Oct 03/2011 01:40PM:
#NickKeeling: Do you ever excavate cities or settlements that are now underwater? How have they been affected?

Do you think you'll ever find Atlantis? - Joe Mello