Page 30 - Green - Maritime Archaeology: A Technical Handbook. 2nd ed

Chapter 1: Introduction to Maritime Archaeology 9
with the possibility of rich rewards. By the late 1960s, there was a twofold situation: recreational divers who collected souvenirs as a cottage industry and treasure hunters, who in the United States had become very big busi- ness, and this business began to spread out across the world.
While this was taking place, underwater archaeology was also beginning. George Bass pioneered a series of excavations in Turkey which have become the model for other archaeologists. For the first time the scientific principles of archaeology to the excavation of underwater sites was applied. At about this time centers began to develop in France, Israel, and Italy, all working on classical shipwreck archaeology. In Scandinavia, the Viking ship archaeology, pioneered on land through the archaeological excavation of ship burials was extended by the discovery of a number of Viking ships sunk in Roskilde Fjord in Denmark. In Sweden, the work of preserving the Wasa became a major conservation problem, but underwater archaeological work developed and continued there too. In The Netherlands, the reclamation of the IJsselmeer polders revealed many hundreds of shipwrecks. This region posed a land archaeological problem rather than an under water one and, until recently, little underwater work had been done in The Netherlands (Maarleveld, 1984). In the UK, underwater archaeological work was carried out by individuals or groups rather than organizations. and a number of important historic sites were investigated.
By the beginning of the 1970s maritime archaeology, which was still in its infancy, was encountering a growing number of problems, many of which still exist today: the crucial issue related to the ownership of underwater archaeological sites, the enactment of legislation to protect these sites, and the material from them. This problem today has become confused and com- plicated by international legislation, offshore seabed rights, and the inter- ests of individuals, business organizations, and vested interests. These issues are discussed in Chapter 16, but the legal complexities are far beyond the scope of this work.
There has also been considerable debate within maritime archaeological circles over codes of ethics. Part of this debate relates to the question of dispersal of collections. Is it acceptable, for example, to excavate a site and then sell the collection? Is it acceptable for a museum to buy material on the auction market that has clearly come from a site that has not been exca- vated in an archaeological manner? In many situations the archaeologist is required by law to sell the collection. In other cases, the sale of the collec- tion finances the excavation work, and by necessity the material must be sold in order to carry on working. It is quite clear that, in the last two decades, we have seen major and important wreck collections sold at auction. Although some material has gone to museums, the majority has been dispersed, and thus has been lost. Usually the only way that the