Articles about the Scheme and Marine Archaeology in the Guardian
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What happened on HMS Terror? Divers plan return to Franklin wrecks
It remains one of the greatest mysteries of naval exploration. What doomed John Franklin’s 1845 attempt to sail the Northwest Passage, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, in his ships Erebus and Terror? The expedition claimed the lives of all 129 men and has gripped the public’s imagination for the past century and a half. Now Canadian researchers are facing a crucial decision on whether to relaunch attempts to find new clues about the ships’ fate. graphic Over the past few years they have already recovered
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Tags: Exploration Arctic Archaeology Heritage Science Article Features Robin McKie Vanessa Thorpe The Observer archive Main section News Observer Main
Wreck of the world’s oldest slave ship at risk of destruction
A 17th-century English shipwreck, the world’s earliest vessel linked to the transatlantic slave trade, is facing complete destruction by 21st-century fishing trawlers. The 1680s Royal African Company trader – seen as a burial ground of slaves who perished on its final voyage – lies on the seabed about 40 miles south of Land’s End. It is being “pounded into oblivion” by “bulldozers of the deep”, claimed a leading British marine archaeologist. This was a trade that saw more than 12 million Africans taken across the Atlantic in 45,000 voyages over 400 years. Many did not survive the journey. Any submerged evidence offering insights into untold horrors that the slaves had endured on board such ships will be lost for ever, warned Dr Sean Kingsley. He has been alarmed by underwater footage filmed for a new documentary series about the transatlantic slave trade. It reveals extensive damage to a wreck that was once “a beast of a ship”, carrying 48 c…
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Tags: Slavery Archaeology Fishing Science UK news Africa Marine life Caribbean BBC Two Article News Dalya Alberge The Observer archive Main section News Observer Main
Archaeologists discover 'exceptional' site at Lake Titicaca
An ancient ceremonial site described as exceptional has been discovered in the Andes by marine archaeologists, who recovered ritual offerings and the remains of slaughtered animals from a reef in the middle of Lake Titicaca. The remarkable haul points to a history of highly charged ceremonies in which the elite of the region’s Tiwanaku state boated out to the reef and sacrificed young llamas, seemingly decorated for death, and made offerings of gold and exquisite stone miniatures to a ray-faced deity, as incense billowed from pottery pumas. Tiwanaku state arose in the Lake Titicaca basin, around the border of modern Bolivia and Peru, between the 5th and 12th centuries AD, and went on to become one of the largest and most influential in the Andes. Formed by a natural fault that divides the Andes into two mountain ranges, the basin is a unique ecosystem with an “inland sea” set 3,800m above sea level. At the time of the Spanish conquest, the basin was home …
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Tags: Archaeology Anthropology History Bolivia Americas Peru World news Higher education Science Article News Ian Sample The Guardian Main section Top stories UK Science
Spain logs hundreds of shipwrecks that tell story of maritime past
The treacherous waters of the Americas had their first taste of Spanish timber on Christmas Day 1492, when Christopher Columbus’ flagship, the Santa María, sank off the coast of what is now Haiti. Over the following four centuries, as Spain’s maritime empire swelled, peaked and collapsed, the waves on which it was built devoured hundreds of ships and thousands of people, swallowing gold, silver and emeralds and scattering spices, mercury and cochineal to the currents. Today, three researchers working for the Spanish culture ministry have finished the initial phase of a project to catalogue the wrecks of the ships that forged and maintained the empire. Led by an archaeologist, Carlos León, the team has logged 681 shipwrecks off Cuba, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Bermuda, the Bahamas and the US Atlantic coast. Its invent…
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Tags: Spain Archaeology Europe World news Science Article News Sam Jones The Guardian Main section International UK Foreign
Antikythera shipwreck yields bronze arm – and hints at spectacular haul of statues
Marine archaeologists have recovered a bronze arm from an ancient shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, where the remains of at least seven more priceless statues from the classical world are believed to lie buried. Divers found the right arm, encrusted and stained green, under half a metre of sediment on the boulder-strewn slope where the ship and its cargo now rest. The huge vessel, perhaps 50m from bow to stern, was sailing from Asia Minor to Rome in 1BC when it foundered near the tiny island between Crete and the Peloponnese. The project team, from the Greek Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities and Lund University in Sweden, discovered the buried arm with a bespoke underwater metal detector which has revealed the presence of other large metal objects nearby under the seabed. “There should be at least seven statues,” Alexandros Sotiriou, a Greek technical diver on the team told the Guardian. The operation is…
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Tags: Science Archaeology Art Sculpture Greece Art and design Europe Heritage Culture World news Article News Ian Sample The Guardian Main section International UK Science
New technologies bring marine archaeology treasures to light
No one knows what happened at Atlit-Yam. The ancient village appeared to be thriving until 7000BC. The locals kept cattle, caught fish and stored grain. They had wells for fresh water, stone houses with paved courtyards. Community life played out around an impressive monument: seven half-tonne stones that stood in a semicircular embrace around a spring where people came to drink. Then one day, life ended. The village that once sat on the Mediterranean coast now lies 10 metres beneath the waves off Israel’s shore. It was inundated when sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age. But Atlit-Yam was destroyed before then, and swiftly, perhaps by a tsunami. Buried under sand at the bottom of the sea, it now ranks as the largest and best preserved prehistoric settlement ever found on the seafloor. Human skeletons still lie there in graves, undisturbed.
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Tags: Archaeology Science Technology Internet of things Internet Italy Article News Ian Sample The Guardian Main section UK news UK Science
Drowned worlds: Egypt's lost cities
Near the tiny farming villages of Rashwan and Abu Mishfa in the Nile Delta – the kind of villages where you might see a girl tugging on the harness of a recalcitrant water buffalo as she leads it out to graze, or a mule-drawn cart loaded with animal feed – is a scrappy lake, the haunt of innumerable egrets. Under this lake, and surrounding fields and houses, lie the remains of Naukratis, a city established by Greeks as a trading port in around 620BC. It is here that a British Museum excavation is under way, and some of the archaeologists’ most intriguing discoveries in the city – which you might think of as a kind of Hong Kong of the ancient world – are about to form part of a
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Tags: Art and design Exhibitions Culture British Museum Museums Heritage Archaeology Science Egypt World news Oceans History Cities Article Features Charlotte Higgins The Guardian G2 Arts UK Culture
In resurrecting Captain Cook’s ship, we can re-examine our colonial past
News has emerged confirming the whereabouts of the wreckage of HMS Endeavour, a ship sailed by Captain James Cook. Reports invariably contain images of the ship in its pomp, proudly reminding the reader of its British origins and its voyage to the Pacific Ocean, where Cook took possession of Australia. But where should Cook’s ship go? Once we dredge it up, or rather, once the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project dredges it up, where should it be put? And will Cook’s ship be allowed to take us beyond our colonial past? It must be remembered that it is our cultural attachment that will be doing the dredging, our obsession and fascination with these objects that circulate as evidence of the all-powerful histories of empire…
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Tags: Opinion Colonialism Archaeology Australia news World news Rhode Island Indigenous Australians Science Comment British empire Article Captain Cook Sarah Cefai UK Opinion
Captain Cook's Endeavour: from the Great Barrier Reef to Rhode Island?
Captain James Cook observed the transit of Venus from the shores of Tahiti, ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef and claimed Australia for the British crown. He fought the French in the Americas, circumnavigated the world and died trying to kidnap a king of Hawaii. Related: Wreckage of Captain James Cook's ship Endeavour found, researchers say But the ship that saw so many adventures was sold, forgotten and lost. For centuries, the fate of HMS Endeavour has remained a mystery. Now marine archaeologists are almost certain they have found its wreck at the bottom of the sea – off exotic Rhode Island.
Researchers with the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (Rimap) will announce on Wednesday that they are nearly sure that they ha…
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Tags: Rhode Island US news Archaeology Science Article News Alan Yuhas The Guardian Main section International US Foreign
Marine archaeologists discover rare artefacts at 1503 shipwreck site
A British-led archaeological expedition has uncovered the 500-year-old wreck site of what it claims is the earliest ship ever found from Europe’s “Age of Discovery”, a Portuguese vessel that was captained by an uncle of the legendary explorer Vasco da Gama. The Esmeralda was one of two ships that sank in a storm off the coast of Oman in 1503, only five years after Da Gama discovered the first sea route from Europe to India. After three years of excavation and historical and scientific research – the findings of which are reported on nationalgeographic.com – the archaeologists, which included teams from Bournemouth University and Oman’s ministry of culture, announced that they had fo…
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Tags: Archaeology Oman History Portugal Education Europe Middle East and north Africa Science World news Article News Esther Addley The Guardian Main section UK news
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