Introduction

Maritime archaeology as a discipline has had a troubled genesis. Starting in the postwar period with the advent of commercially available SCUBA equipment, diving soon became a recreational sport. As the equipment became more accessible, so the sport became more popular. As a result people were soon discovering shipwrecks and the artifacts that they contained, particularly in the Mediterranean. Of course, people had known about ‘things’ in the sea or underwater long before. Hard-hat diving was widely used in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for salvage and underwater operations. In fact, salvage-diving, or working underwater, had been in operation since the seventeenth century when divers using a diving bell had salvaged the guns from the Swedish warship Wasa at a depth of about 30 m. The first ‘archaeological’ operation was probably the discovery by Greek sponge divers of the Antikythera ship in 1900. Here the divers were under the instruction of archaeologists who directed the operations from the surface.

Throughout the postwar period, various nonarchaeological groups have worked in the Mediterranean on a variety of Greek and Roman wrecks and these operations were often conducted with great care and proficiency, but unfortunately sometimes not with rigorous archaeological principles. The Grand Conglout; wreck excavated by Jacques Cousteau in 1952 was one of the first excavations of a site using the aqualung. The work was featured in an article titled ‘Fish men discover 2,200-year-old Greek ship’. Cousteau describes the use of an air lift as something akin to a browsing horse and munching shells, sand, shards, and things too big for it to eat, such as parts of amphora which, when jammed in the pipe mouth, were pulverized to allow them to go up the air lift. Of course, this was very early days and there were, needless to say, no archaeologists on that project.

The first underwater archaeological excavation was of the Cape Geledonia wreck in 1960 by George Bass. This was a groundbreaking excavation; archaeologists who could dive, plus divers who were experienced in archaeological sites, joined an international team that established a benchmark for conducting archaeology underwater. The watchword then was: ‘‘It is easier to teach an archaeologist to dive that a diver to be an archaeologist.’’

By the 1960s, the field of maritime archaeology was expanding. European countries and countries bordering the Mediterranean were beginning to establish modest maritime archaeological programs. However, at the same time, there was a growing interest in looting and treasure-hunting, and many important sites in the Mediterranean were completely destroyed for their cargos of amphora. Against this background, the discipline of maritime archaeology slowly evolved, largely independently from traditional terrestrial archaeology and often at times against enormous adversity.

In order to conduct a maritime archaeological program, it is necessary to have legislation to protect the underwater cultural heritage (UCH). In many European countries this was enacted early, but in many countries the legislation was either inadequate or nonexistent (see Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation). The first example of single-purpose legislation to protect shipwrecks was enacted in 1963 in Western Australia (a state with a population of about 1 million people at that time). Today, the state has over 1200 known shipwrecks that are protected by legislation and these are managed by a state government department with a staff of ten people. In the United Kingdom, on the other hand, where there are literally hundreds of thousands of wrecks, for a long time the legislation was inadequate and till 2002, only 47 sites were protected. The level of management in the UK can be judged by the fact that about 70 000 sports divers undertook 1.5 million dives in 1992, while at the same time there were only 20 or so paid professional diving archaeologists. While the situation in the United Kingdom is not a particularly encouraging example, many countries have no legislation and no means of looking after sites. Other countries have relatively modest programs but there are few places in the world that can be said to have an ideal situation. A recent UNESCO convention (see below) will ultimately help to redress this situation.