Maritime Archaeology in the 21st Century by James P. Delgado he art and science of archaeology is now more than a cemury old, and the prac tice ofir underwater and in the maritime world spans about half that rime, or some fifty-five years. While antiquarian interest in maritime finds dares to the nineteenth century, with discoveries of buried ships-either in land-filled harbors, or the fa mous disi nrermem of the Go ks rad and Oseberg ship burials in what is now Norwaywhar lay under the seas awaited a new century. The 1900 discovery and recovery of a trove of ancient bronze statues from a first century BC wreck off the G reek Aegean island of Antikyrhera sparked interest in undersea exploration . The invention of SCUBA, along with a growth in the number of divers in the 1950s and 1960s, led to the birth of archaeology practiced under water as well as underwater archaeology. The first scientific excavation of a shipw reck in its entirety from the seabed rook place in 1960 when George F. Bass and Peter Throckmorton, working with Honor Frost, Frederic Dumas, C laude Duthuit and others raised the scattered remains of a Bronze Age wreck dating to around 1200 BC from the waters of Turkey's Cape Gelidonya.
In 1960, George Bass-often referred to as the Father of Underwater Archaeology-and his colleague Peter Throckmorton led a team in a fu ll archaeological excavation of a Bronze Age shipwreck off Cape Gelidonya in Titrkey. (above) Bass and Throckmorton examine bronze ingots raised from the Gelidonya wreck site.
In the decades that followed in the twentieth century, a virtual explosion of technology, interes t, and opportunity-as well as controversy and conflict-brought shipwrecks and maritime archaeology increasingly into focus for both the archaeological profession and the public. The initial result was a spate of discoveri es, some of famous ships, while others ultimately proved to be insignificant in terms of name recognition or historical fame; however, these wrecks yielded forgotten or lost information about ship forms , construction, or aspects of trade and life at sea. The big-name discoveries and recoveries included the Swedish wa rship Vasa, a 1628 loss in Stockholm harbor that, when raised intact, became an iconic poster child for the new discipline and yielded a trove of artifacts that documented not only the vessel, but also life (and lives lost) during its brief career. Viking ships excavated from a shallow grave at Roskilde, near Copenh agen, greatly expanded knowled ge of various types of these craft, hitherto limited to the Royal Dragon ships like Goksrad or
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Vasa broke the surface for the first time in 333 years when it was raised intact from the seabed in Stockholm Harbor in 1961.
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