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Archaeology, Page 3

Answering your questions on Week 2

https://youtu.be/FeUk3CsRWDI Like last week, we've got a selection of team members (Fraser, Thomas and Rodrigo) together in an informal setting to try to answer some of the questions that learners have asked this week. A few of them are ones that were posted in Week 1 after our last video, but most of them are from Week 2. Questions carried over from Week 1 1. Continue reading →

Answering your questions on Week 1

https://youtu.be/hBTHuoSGJqs This week several members of the course team met to answer some of the key questions that have come out of the course this week. Some of the questions that educators tackle include: 1.9. Salim Al Hajri: How do these names vary through time and space? I mean from place to place (Europe to Middle East to China) and from the Romans to nowadays? Michael Smith: Maritime archaeology is the study of man-made objects, cultures, etc., in and around the sea. Continue reading →

New Winchelsea Harbour Geotechnical Survey

As learners active on our MOOC ‘Shipwrecks and Submerged Worlds’ have learned during week 1, maritime archaeology does not always necessarily take place underwater. What we study is human engagement with the seas and the oceans and often, the evidence for this engagement is now to be found on land. One area that is of specific interest to me are harbour-sites, the interface between land and water par excellence, and the stage for a lot of human activity. Continue reading →

Plan the dive, dive the plan: Shipwrecks and Submerged Worlds (2nd run)

It’s with a strange mixture of excitement and trepidation that we’re gearing up for the next run of the Shipwrecks and Submerged Worlds course (which starts on Monday 25th May). The first run last year was an incredibly positive experience. We had no idea what to expect, or an understanding of how people would react to the content we had created. From my experience working out on site and doing lectures for different societies, I thought that there would be a good level of interest. Continue reading →

Winchelsea Medieval Port Project

New project at the ancient port of Winchelsea, East Sussex, to include geotechnical survey and an RTI survey of the Ship Graffiti in St. Thomas Church and the cellar underneath Blackfriars Barn. Find out more at the Medieval Ports, Ships and Sailors conference in Winchelsea on the 26th of April 2015. For more information, and to register, please email thomas.dhoop@soton.ac. Continue reading →

HMS Invincible dive

Thanks to Rodrigo, one of our new facilitators, for sharing this short video from last weekend's dive on Royal Navy's first HMS Invincible. The ship sank on Horse Tail Sand in the Eastern Solent in 1758. The bow of the site has been scoured out, revealing the gun deck and various artefacts. For more information about the site, please visit: http://www.maritimearchaeologytrust. Continue reading →

Life of a core sample

Core samples can be gathered from all over the world. Here, core samples are being taken from an intertidal site at Somerset. They can be removed from the ground using a variety of techniques; either hand powered or mechanical in nature. We can take them from dry land, inter-tidal and underwater contexts. Once removed from the site they are taken to the BOSCORF (British Ocean Sediment Core Research Facility) Core store at the National Oceanographic Centre in Southampton. Continue reading →

El Amarna letter 35: Early trade relations between Egypt and Cyprus

The El Amarna letters (EA) are valuable textual evidence especially when investigating trade and maritime connections in the eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age. Careful examination of their content enables the archaeologist to draw conclusions on geographical, political and socio-economic conditions of that era and allows him to compare and accord them with the archaeological record. Continue reading →