Management Of Underwater Cultural Heritage Research Articles

Preserving Sunken Military Vessels as Underwater Cultural Heritage in Colombia: Legal Challenges and Prospects for the USS Kearsarge Wreck Site

This study examines the legal challenges related to preserving sunken military vessels as Underwater Cultural Heritage (UCH) in Colombia. These challenges include Spanish galleon shipwrecks, limited international cooperation, and the lack of legal recognition for sunken military vessels under domestic law (Law 1675 of 2013). To address these issues, this article reviews the concepts of warship and sovereign immunity as they relate to the status of sunken military vessels. The study places a particular focus on the USS Kearsarge, a military shipwreck in Colombian territorial waters protected by the Sunken Military Craft Act of 2004 (SMCA) of the United States. Additionally, it analyzes the legal frameworks and management of UCH in both Colombia and the United States, as well as providing two lists of Colombia’s sunken military vessels and foreign sunken military vessels in its waters. The research concludes by highlighting the complexities of managing UCH in Colombia and offering a prospectus on the future of the USS Kearsarge wreck site as shared heritage. Ultimately, this study underscores the need for a more comprehensive legal framework and greater international cooperation to ensure the preservation and protection of sunken military vessels in Colombia.

Application of Parametric Sub-Bottom Profilers for Responsible in Situ Management of Underwater Shallow-Buried Archaeological Materials

The application potential of parametric sub-bottom profilers (SBPs) to in situ management of underwater archaeological sites at risk from degradational loss of shallow-buried materials is presented. This approach is based on the process-driven in situ preservation and research frameworks advocated by the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage and provides a basis for greater uptake by the archaeological community. Results from research at a purposely prepared sub-seabed site and on the adjoining James Matthews (1841) wreck site in Western Australia demonstrate how noninvasive SBP-derived data support responsible management of underwater cultural heritage (UCH) sites by: (1) identifying and/or confirming the presence of sub-seabed UCH material, (2) identifying the potential level of risk of further material loss from ongoing degradation, (3) providing key information with which to make a sound in situ management or site-research plan for the sub-seabed material, and (4) delivering monitoring feedback regarding the success of in situ management actions.

Editorial Issue 2/2022: The Heritage of Water-Related Infrastructures and Governance

Editorial Issue 2/2022: The Heritage of Water-Related Infrastructures and Governance

Different approaches to the protection and enhancement of underwater archaeological sites: Acquirements and Aspirations

This paper presents aspects of underwater cultural heritage management in Greece, focusing mainly on accessibility to the diving community and the general public. More specifically, it discusses different approaches to the protection and enhancement of Underwater Archaeological Sites, already put into practice over the last years (2018-2021) by the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, the public service of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports responsible for the management of underwater heritage. Moreover, it analyses the aspirations for the future, as these took shape already at the beginning of 2021. Lately, cultural management has turned into a fast-growing sector with multilevel developmental prospects. In order to tap into the underwater cultural heritage potential, we must always take into consideration the identity and special characteristics of each underwater site as well as the different possibilities of access — physical or virtual — that are rapidly changing because of new technological achievements. All these parameters affect significantly decision making and the undertaking of relevant initiatives. Examples of the pilot implementation of the opening of underwater archaeological/cultural sites to the public will be presented. Through them, preliminary conclusions concerning the efficacy of the selected managerial approaches can be drawn, while at the same time domains where more should be done will be highlighted.

Resisting Internationalism?

Abstract This article reviews historical legislation relating to the management of shipwrecks in Indonesia, examining issues relating to terminology, division of authority, and implementation. It focuses on the evolution of Indonesia’s commercial salvage legislation, from its introduction in 1989 to its abrupt cessation in 2010, when a moratorium was introduced. While the moratorium was interpreted as a sign that Indonesia was moving closer to internationally accepted principles regarding the management of underwater cultural heritage, the introduction of a new law unrelated to maritime heritage has instead disturbed this anticipated trajectory. Designed to stimulate job opportunities, Law No. 11/2020 on Job Creation has, perversely, raised the prospect that the moratorium will be repealed. As this article demonstrates, the changing conceptualization of the value of shipwrecks and their cargoes remains a live issue in Indonesia, reflecting unresolved tensions about its identity as a maritime nation.

Quo Vadis Regulation on Underwater Cultural Heritage in Indonesia: Balancing Conservation and Economic Interest

The management of underwater cultural heritage in Indonesia is still experiencing many obstacles, one of which is the imbalance between conservation and economic interest in managing underwater cultural heritage. The results indicate that these problems stem from the legal gap that exists in the Indonesian legal system. Existing Laws and Regulations have not been adequate to respond to the needs for conservation and proper economic utilization of underwater cultural heritage. The non-existent provision in regards to in situ and ex situ conservation, as well as the appraisal and selling methods, has led to further legal uncertainty. By using normative legal research methods, this research paper aims to analyze the urgency of managing valuable cargo objects from sunken ships classified as underwater cultural heritage objects and formulate a new concept of underwater cultural heritage management which contain seven steps that will balance both conservation and economic.

Sustainable and Resilient Management of Underwater Cultural Heritage (UCH) in Remote Mediterranean Islands: A Methodological Framework

The impacts of mass tourism and COVID-19 crisis demonstrate the need for healthy, peaceful, and authentic recreation options, giving prominence to emerging destinations, such as remote Mediterranean islands. These, although endowed with exquisite land and underwater cultural heritage (UCH), are confronted with insularity drawbacks. However, the exceptional land and especially UCH, and the alternative tourism forms these can sustain, e.g., diving tourism, are highly acknowledged. The focus of this paper is on the power of participation and participatory planning in pursuing UCH preservation and sustainable management as a means for heritage-led local development in remote insular regions. Towards this end, the linkages between participation and (U)CH management from a policy perspective—i.e., the global and European policy scenery—and a conceptual one—cultural heritage cycle vs. planning cycle—are firstly explored. These, coupled with the potential offered by ICT-enabled participation, establish a framework for respective participatory cultural planning studies. This framework is validated in Leros Island, Greece, based on previous research conducted in this distinguishable insular territory and WWII battlefield scenery. The policy and conceptual considerations of this work, enriched by Leros evidence-based results, set the ground for featuring new, qualitative and extrovert, human-centric and heritage-led, developmental trails in remote insular communities.

The Innovative and State of the Art Public Access Management of Malta’s Underwater Cultural Heritage

The obligation to preserve underwater cultural heritage is a core principle of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage. A key element of this obligation is a balance of scientific research, protection, and the promotion of responsible access to underwater cultural heritage sites. Such a balance requires the setting up of a network of communication between the tourism and heritage sectors on the one hand and the maritime and diving communities on the other hand. A variety of approaches have been developed to promote responsible access to underwater cultural heritage sites, and since the vast majority of the public does not dive, this also includes the development of virtual access. In Malta, maritime archaeology can be traced to humble and sporadic beginnings in the 1950s. The following decades brought a growing interest in diving activities and a rising number of diving schools and clubs. Whilst Malta has today established itself as a diving tourism destination, responsible access to underwater cultural heritage sites was not always entrenched in dive operations or institutionally recognized. The protection and management of underwater cultural heritage has recently been firmly established within Heritage Malta, the national agency for museums, conservations, and cultural heritage. This paper is intended to outline the trajectory of Malta’s underwater cultural heritage management and to present the innovative and state of the art public access system that is managed by the Underwater Cultural Heritage Unit within Heritage Malta.

From Discovery to Public Consumption: The Process of Mapping and Evaluating Underwater Cultural Heritage in Malta

The in situ promotion and preservation of underwater cultural heritage sites is one of the main ideas of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage. Currently, most shipwrecks are found in water shallower than the 50 m contour. The continued technological advances and increases in technical diving and deep-water exploration point towards a shift in this statistic, which is set to increase exponentially in the not-too-distant future. Thus, it is imperative to look at ways in which such directives can be implemented. This paper will highlight the synergy between existing remote sensing technologies and the management of underwater cultural heritage with examples of on-going research projects, such as Malta’s approach to surveying and implementing a scoring system for historic wreck sites based on local and global considerations of historic and natural conditions of site elements. Such an approach allows for the scaling of sites based on a number of parameters and provides instructive information for the creation of management strategies. The intention here is to demonstrate how large-scale remote sensing surveys can make major contributions to site management, which, in turn, facilitates the decision-making process in terms of how and what information is transmitted to divers and members of the public.

Spatial and temporal variability in geomorphic change at tidally influenced shipwreck sites: The use of time‐lapse multibeam data for the assessment of site formation processes

AbstractShipwrecks are an integral part of our maritime archaeological landscape and are associated with diverse societal and cultural interests, yielding significant management challenges. Coupled hydrodynamic and geomorphological processes significantly impact the effective in situ preservation of these fragile sites. In this study, we assess sediment budget change and hydrodynamic triggers at metal‐hulled shipwrecks lost between 1875 and 1918, all located in the tidally dominated Irish Sea at depths between 26 and 84 m. This is conducted using time‐lapse, multibeam echosounder surveys at multiannual, annual, and weekly time steps, supported by sediment grain‐size analysis, modeled ocean currents, and shallow seismic data. Results indicate significant changes at all time steps for sites located in sand‐dominated environments, whereas the seabed around shipwrecks settled in multimodal sediments shows virtually no change outside of measurement errors (±30 cm). Variability in geomorphic change is attributed to local environmental factors, including bed shear stress, sediment supply, and spatial barriers to scour. We demonstrate that individual wrecks in similar shelf sea regions can be in very different equilibrium states, which has critical implications for the in situ management of underwater cultural heritage.

Going for the win‐win: including the public in underwater cultural heritage management through citizen science in Australia and New Zealand

Going for the win‐win: including the public in underwater cultural heritage management through citizen science in Australia and New Zealand

Building Knowledge and Connections: The Success of the UNESCO International Capacity Building Training Programmes for Cultural Heritage Management of Underwater Archaeological Sites

Many countries do not have sufficient professional capacity to manage its underwater cultural heritage (hereafter UCH) or fulfil its research objectives. To address this situation, which is acute in some countries, since 2009 UNESCO has, in partnership with heritage organisations, facilitated professional training in a number of locations, notably Argentina, Colombia, Croatia, Cuba, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Mexico, Spain, St. Eustatius, Thailand and Vietnam. Although there are similarities these courses differ in length, content, and sometimes emphasis. What many have in common is the application of teaching units taken from the training syllabus developed in Thailand from 2009, and published as UNESCO’s Training Manual for the UNESCO Foundation Course on the Protection and Management of Underwater Cultural Heritage in Asia and the Pacific. Organisers and trainers have learned important lessons; most importantly that successful training courses comprise more than the sum of the individual teaching components. In particular those international courses that bring together participants from different cultures present their own challenges, not just differences in language, but also other considerations. This paper, using examples from the courses listed above, will illustrate the structure and organisation of UNESCO’s Foundation Course that not only helps to fulfil the specific goals of the professional training, but leaves a lasting legacy that continues to change attitudes to the management and protection of UCH.

Sustainable Management of Underwater Cultural Heritage: The Route from Discovery to Engagement—Open Issues in the Mediterranean

Fatal events taking place in World War (WW) I and II have left behind important historical evidence as an underwater cultural heritage (UCH) (e.g., shipwrecks, submerged aircraft, war artifacts), lying in peace at the bottom of, among others, the Mediterranean Sea. The article aims at exploring the challenges for UCH protection/preservation and sustainable exploitation with emphasis on this sea. UCH is so far dealt with in a “silo” approach by marine archaeologists or heritage professionals, who often ignore its potential for serving local sustainable development goals. The paper elaborates on the value, but also the complexity, multi- and inter-disciplinary as well as multi-actors’ nature of UCH management and sustainable exploitation, perceiving these as a “wicked” planning problem. It attempts to illuminate various important dimensions of this problem, such as its glocal (global/local) context; the conflicting and, in certain cases, inconsistent UCH legal protection framework, touching upon a variety of spatial scales; the contemporary policy frameworks favoring UCH management; etc. Exploration of these dimensions reveals open issues or gaps that need to be filled, and sets the ground for a more holistic and integrated UCH research and management approach for building up the yet largely untold, Mediterranean WW I and II UCH narrative; and shifting this area from a sea graveyard to a place of memory and cultural enrichment.

MANAGING UNDERWATER HERITAGE IN EGYPT

The protection and management of Underwater Cultural Heritage is a challenging topic, as it involves the interplay of national and international law, This study will present information about underwater heritage in Egypt and the most important discoveries, the legal framework for the protection of underwater heritage at the international and local level as well as the management of waterlogged heritage in Egypt and emphasize the importance of strategic planning function - the key to all of the follows in site management. It helps to organize the program, identify key issues and anticipate questions, and provide the data to answer these questions. Egypt has a sunken archaeological treasure that is one of the largest sunken archaeological sites in the world and the protection and management of Underwater Cultural Heritage is a challenging topic, as it involves the interplay of national and international law this paper aims to shed light on the Underwater Cultural Heritage management in Egypt.

Archaeological use of Synthetic Aperture Sonar on deepwater wreck sites in Skagerrak

Marine archaeological surveying in deep waters has so far been challenging, mainly due to operational and technological constraints. The standard tool has been Side Scan Sonar (SSS) towed behind a surface vessel. Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS) technology is not subject to the traditional range/resolution trade-off, and produces results of considerably higher quality than traditional SSS. In 2015 and 2016 a comprehensive mapping of wrecks in Skagerrak, a large deepwater area off the south coast of Norway was undertaken, using an interferometric SAS system deployed on an autonomous underwater vehicle. By examining data from two passes of one of the many historical wrecks that were detected in the survey area, we demonstrate how SAS can be used to produce very high resolution imagery and bathymetry of wreck sites. Furthermore, post processing techniques are applied to exploit the high information content inherent in SAS data, enhancing aspects of the data for relevant archaeological analysis and interpretation. We show in this paper how SAS technology represents significant improvements in our abilities to conduct high quality and high resolution seabed mapping. The adoption of this technology will both benefit archaeological research and provide knowledge for better decision making in underwater cultural heritage management.

Project SAMPHIRE: Crowd Sourcing Maritime Archaeology data off Scotland's West Coast

ABSTRACTPerhaps the greatest barrier to effective management of underwater cultural heritage is the lack of data on the nature and location of offshore archaeological resources. This is a problem shared with terrestrial archaeology, but is particularly acute due to the limitations of survey techniques in the underwater environment. In Scotland <15% of known ship losses from the last 200 years have been located and the record is far less comprehensive for earlier periods, verging on a near total data gap. Most known archaeological sites in Scottish waters have been discovered through large-scale sonar survey of relatively low resolution and a considerable bias has been introduced in the archaeological record; this has favored the discovery and documentation of larger and more recent, often upstanding, metal shipwrecks. This article presents the methods and results from a three-year project designed to reduce this bias by demonstrating large-scale prospecting for maritime archaeology through a community-based crowd-sourcing approach. Project SAMPHIRE (the Scottish Atlantic Maritime Past: Heritage, Investigation, Research and Education Project) was geographically focused on the west coast of the Scottish mainland and was undertaken between 2013 and 2015, resulting in a large number of new archaeological discoveries, including shipwrecks, aircraft, and other material of a much more varied nature than what is typically found through large-scale hydrographic surveys.

Survey and Recording Technologies in Italian Underwater Cultural Heritage: Research and Public Access Within the Framework of the 2001 UNESCO Convention

The 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage is slowly but peremptorily becoming a standard reference tool for underwater archaeology and underwater cultural heritage management. The many provisions included within the Convention touch on many aspects that are key to an effective protection and promotion of the underwater cultural heritage. Within the web of these provisions many aspects are gaining consideration and driving research in underwater archaeology worldwide. These provisions, when seen within a wider frame of social, economical and technological dynamics, pinpoint many aspects requiring further scrutiny from the disciplinary circle. In the framework of the 2001 UNESCO Convention, this article will analyze the path traveled in technological acquisition in the practice of Italian underwater archaeology and how this has affected the approach to underwater cultural heritage management, particularly highlighting how this process has been further influenced by the adoption in 2001 of the Convention and Italy’s ratification of it in 2010.

The Australian Historic Shipwreck Preservation Project: In situ Preservation and Long-Term Monitoring of the Clarence (1850) and James Matthews (1841) Shipwreck Sites

Increasingly, archaeologists are opting for on-site examination, reinterment, and in situ preservation of underwater cultural heritage sites as the first option in the management of sites at risk, as opposed to the more traditional excavation, recovery, conservation, and display/storage methods. This decision will inevitably be based on significance assessment, degree of perceived risk, and resourcing issues. However, long-term monitoring must become an integral part of these management programmes in order to quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of the in situ preservation techniques employed. In 2012 the Australian Historic Shipwreck Preservation Project (AHSPP) was awarded a large Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Grant, enabling ten partner organizations and three Australian universities to collaborate in one of the largest multi-organizational maritime archaeology projects to be undertaken in Australia to date. One of the major aims of the project is to develop a protocol for the excavation, detailed recording and reburial of significant shipwrecks under threat, fostering a strategic national approach for the management of underwater cultural heritage (UCH) sites at risk. Two historically significant shipwreck sites that are considered under threat were chosen for this longitudinal comparative study — the Clarence (1850) located in Port Phillip Bay, Victoria; and the James Matthews (1841) which lies in Cockburn Sound, Western Australia. Both sites have been preserved in situ using two very different but innovative remediation strategies. More importantly, long-term monitoring programmes have been implemented on both sites, which will characterize changes in the reburial environment and the effect on the reinterred materials. In this way, the efficacy of both in situ preservation techniques will be systematically tested, providing a comparative analysis of practical protocols for the long-term protection and management of underwater cultural heritage.

Discovery of Iron Grapnel Anchors in Early Modern Ryukyu and Management of Underwater Cultural Heritage in Okinawa, Japan

The Yarabuoki underwater site contains seven iron grapnel anchors and Early Modern Okinawan ceramic jars and is dated to the 16th–19th centuries. The site lies at a depth of 12–32 m off the western coast of Ishigaki Island in Okinawa, Japan. Based on underwater archaeological and broadband multibeam surveys, as well as historical research of the artefacts and Early Modern Ryukyuan shipping, we discuss the possible anchor and vessel types in Ryukyu and Eastern Asia in Early Modern times. We also discuss the efficacy of low-cost ROV for assisting surveys in shallow-water environments and the value of educational programmes for promoting the management and conservation of underwater cultural heritage.

HMS Swift: Scientific Research and Management of Underwater Cultural Heritage in Argentina

The Swift had an overall length of 28 meters and a beam of 8 meters and was armed with fourteen six-pounder cannons and twelve swivel guns. A few days earlier, under the command of Captain George Farmer and with a crew of nearly a hundred men, the Swift had left the British base with the purpose of conducting geographical surveys in the region. However, according to the historical documents, strong and persistent winds drove the ship towards the continental shore. The captain decided to enter the Deseado estuary, a natural and well sheltered harbor which had been visited by sailors and explorers since the 16th-century.