The Seventh “P” – By Dr. Susan Langley

I recently ran across the following quotation regarding profiting from underwater history, archaeology and ocean environments:

“[Profit] A dirty word?  Should there be financial gain from encouraging respect of the ocean and the history it shrouds?  Of course! Even non-profit organizations survive on donations from other people’s earnings and revenues, which are generated by profit.  The Other ‘P’s depend on the support of the profit, as it depends on them.  Without it, Passion dwindles, the Product loses value, Protection & Preservation suffer, and Promotion becomes pointless.  No Profit, end of Dream!”

50 Years Later – By Dr. Filipe Castro

In 2010, less than one year from now, George F. Bass and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology will go back to Cape Gelidonya and take a new look at the Late Bronze Age site that 50 years ago was the first shipwreck to be excavated in its entirety on the seabed, by a diving archaeologist, and using the common standards of land archaeology.  The careful excavation, conservation, study, and publication of its artifact collection led archaeologists to believe that this late 13^th-Century BCE ship was originally Near Eastern, probably Syrian or Canaanite, and pushed the beginning of the Phoenician seafaring tradition several centuries back.  Such can be the importance of a shipwreck excavation.

Squeaky Wheels – By David Ball

The two previous blog postings have included, to a certain extent, a discussion on the issue of treasure hunting versus archaeology. It is unfortunate that so many conversations on marine archaeology often turn to this well-worn argument; however, it remains an important issue and one that will no doubt continue for the foreseeable future. One reason archaeologists are losing the battle of educating the public on the need to protect submerged archaeological resources is because we fail to voice our concerns in large enough numbers to lawmakers and regulators. So I thought I’d move the discussion toward mentioning an initiative currently underway in the United States.

‘Where there’s Muck there’s Brass’: Archaeology and the Real World? – By Dr. Joe Flatman

There is nothing like a recession to get everyone thinking about value– what people value in terms of personal as well as professional ethics, and more cynically about how they themselves are valued, how much their jobs are ‘worth’ both socially and economically. Issues like this are especially important to archaeologists– or at least they should be if we are to genuinely lay claim to Mortimer Wheeler’s maxim that ‘archaeologists are digging up, not things, but people’. Identifying the tangible benefits to society of archaeology is difficult at the best of times but especially so when finances are pinched; to paraphrase from the macroeconomic term, we do not produce either guns or butter, so what is the value of our contribution? How does archaeology ‘work’ in the ‘real world’ of profit and loss?

So, Who Cares About Underwater Cultural Heritage? – By Dr. John Broadwater

Back in the 1970s, when I first became interested in protecting shipwrecks, the picture was pretty bleak. In the United States, there was no national legislation to protect shipwrecks or other submerged archaeological sites. Among the very few states with protective legislation, most imposed few—if any—archaeological requirements, and the bulk of the recovered cultural material was given to the salvors. Frequently, salvors turned to the Admiralty courts where they were usually designated “salvor in possession,” often being given complete control of the site and its contents.