Ship Graveyard Research Articles

High resolution optical and acoustic remote sensing datasets of the Puck Lagoon

The very shallow marine basin of Puck Lagoon in the southern Baltic Sea, on the Northern coast of Poland, hosts valuable benthic habitats and cultural heritage sites. These include, among others, protected Zostera marina meadows, one of the Baltic’s major medieval harbours, a ship graveyard, and likely other submerged features that are yet to be discovered. Prior to this project, no comprehensive high-resolution remote sensing data were available for this area. This article describes the first Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) derived from a combination of airborne bathymetric LiDAR, multibeam echosounder, airborne photogrammetry and satellite imagery. These datasets also include multibeam echosounder backscatter and LiDAR intensity, allowing determination of the character and properties of the seafloor. Combined, these datasets are a vital resource for assessing and understanding seafloor morphology, benthic habitats, cultural heritage, and submerged landscapes. Given the significance of Puck Lagoon’s hydrographical, ecological, geological, and archaeological environs, the high-resolution bathymetry, acquired by our project, can provide the foundation for sustainable management and informed decision-making for this area of interest.

Shipyard Archaeology in the Southern Baltic

In the past two decades, the topic of archaeological studies of shipyard sites has regularly appeared in research devoted to maritime archaeology around the world. The closer attention of archaeologists to shipyard sites is due to the increased interest in studies of the maritime cultural landscape, ship graveyards, and coastal archaeology. The purpose of this paper is to review the problems of archaeological research of shipyard sites in the southern Baltic Sea and to compare these problems with previous research results from other regions. Seasonal or occasional sites for the building or repair of boats and ships have been created since the earliest times. Isolating such sites is often problematic since sleepers or simple wooden supports were sufficient for the construction of plank boats and the work was carried out in the open air. In the coastal cities of the southern Baltic, there is evidence for the existence of designated permanent shipbuilding yards, although without permanent shipbuilding structures, since the late Middle Ages. These were places in which a ship’s carpenter received permission from the city authorities to use a particular section of the yard for shipbuilding in return for an appropriate fee. Structures used for construction were assembled each time to a specific order from the builder’s materials and they could be dismantled after completion of the project. Archaeological research of the Gdansk Lastadia site remains the best recognized shipyard providing a more complete picture of the maritime cultural landscape of this southern Baltic city from the late Middle Ages to the 19th century.

Podcast: Paradise Lost

Nuclear bomb tests conducted during the Cold War turned an idyllic tropical isle into a radioactive ship graveyard.

The Aesthetics of Migration in an Age of Anxiety

Propelled by the sometimes opportunistic, sometimes desperate desire for better living conditions, migrants leave one land to occupy another. This act is inherently transgressive; whether this transgression is justified as “progress” or used as fodder for persecution depends on who controls the historical narrative. In recent work, artists Zineb Sedira, Allan deSouza, and Mary Evans express both the instability of the migrant as a cipher and the anxieties that the migratory experience creates. The current global refugee crisis has fanned the flames of xenophobia and virulent nationalism in Europe and the United States, and these works offer a rebuttal to degrading rhetoric and imagery that stigmatizes the migrant. Sedira’s 2008 photographs and 2009 videos of a Mauritanian ship graveyard evoke desperate emigration as well as economic stagnation and environmental degradation. DeSouza’s World Series (2011), inspired by Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series (1941), suggests bodily movement within a matrix of geopolitical, state-controlled, and natural environments, while referencing historical precedents such as Columbus. Evans’s series Please Do Not Bend (2015–16) is a touching tribute to the resilience of Africans and their descendants who have migrated, voluntarily or by force, over the centuries. In Evans’s Thousands Are Sailing (2016), anonymous silhouettes of brown bodies are in a liminal space, unmoored from one nation and locked out of another. Migration is an unstable experience, and an equally unstable subject. These works reclaim the imagery associated with the “abject immigrant” to restore their agency as well as their humanity.