Campus News
s ne xt le , Ohio, pose 4, of Granvil ’1 cover tt re ke ur ed B lp e Mag gi nnons she he ca n to lfha shipwreck off to one of the underwater d fie ti en id from an un orida . the coast of Fl
Juniata
Burkett, a lo ngtime scub a diver show preparing fo nh r a dive, wor ked as a sum ere at the Lighth mer intern ouse Archeo logy Mariti me Program
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Most summer jobs are spent waiting tables; maybe working in a big box store. Maggie Burkett ’14, of Granville, Ohio, spent a good part of the past summer 30 feet below the Atlantic recovering artifacts from a 19th century shipwreck. Burkett, who learned to scuba dive at 15, was an intern at the Lighthouse Archeology Maritime Program based in St. Augustine, Fla. and typically spent 12 hours a day either diving as part of an archeology team, photographing recovery operations, or working on the dive boat. Juniata wishes it can take credit for discovering the opportunity for Maggie, but: “My parents and I were Googling ‘maritime archeology’ and the Lighthouse program popped up,” she says. “I’ve always known I was going to do some career that had to do with being on a boat.” So this summer she spent more time underwater than a Las Vegas real estate investor. She spent the entire internship diving on an unidentified 19th century shipwreck off the Florida coast. Among her personal discoveries? An intact perfect silver spoon. A tea kettle. A love for doing anything underwater. “We would carry tools down—like zip ties, screwdrivers, rebar— and I really liked fixing things underwater,” she says. The highlight of her summer was helping recover two massive cannons from the shipwreck. One weighed 1,500 pounds and the other weighed in at 1,000 pounds. Burkett helped excavate the cannons and photographed recovery efforts. Although Juniata is hundreds of miles away from glamorous underwater shipwrecks, Burkett is not going to forsake her College to head off to a specialized program. “In maritime archeology you need to know chemistry for conservation, physics for scuba, history and Juniata has courses in all these that can help in some way,” she explains. Next summer? She’s heading back beneath the waves to dive the same wreck. “I was the youngest person at the field school and I think this is a huge jumpstart for the career I want in maritime archeology,” she says.
Photos (left): courtesy Maggie Burkett ’14; (right): Juniata Photo File
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