Page 59 - Kennemerland VOC ship, 1664 - Published Reports

K. MUCKELROY: WRECK SITES
transformation techniques (Clarke, 1968:
527-30) it should be possible to specify the
exact distortions involved or, given the
distortions, to recreate the original form of the
structure. In the end, it should be possible to
model the type of exercise undertaken on the
Pantano Longarini ship (Throckmorton, of maritime archaeology, two things are
1973) totally on a computer, thus allowing oneself the freedom to test a large number of alternative solutions before deciding on the most satisfactory one.
‘Whoever you are, if your work calls for the interpretation of data, you may be able to do without statistics, but you won’t do so well’ (Moroney, 1951: 463). There can be no doubt that this trenchant remark applies to maritime archaeology as strongly as to any other discipline. The great problem is, as Mr Moroney says a few pages earlier: ‘Each field raises new problems and calls for new techniques and modifications of old ones to suit its own peculiarities’ (Moroney, 1951: 461). It is our job to achieve these modifica- tions, by dint of numerous experiments on many different types of material. However, no-one can expect every maritime archaeo- logist to be a high-powered statistician as well, which is the principal reason why the main
body of this paper has been concerned with very elementary techniques. Bearing in mind that most practitioners do not have easy access to research institutes with compre- hensive computer facilities, and also remem-
References
necessary; firstly, the subject must be more widely recognised as a serious discipline deserving financial and technical support, and secondly, maritime archaeologists must be prepared to adopt systematic programmes of analysis in their investigations. I hope the present paper has gone a little way towards indicating some possibilities in the applica- tion of such programmes to underwater sites.
Acknowledgments
Firstly, I must thank the committee and members of the Universities of Aston and Manchester Marine Archaeological Expedition for inviting me to join them in the Out Skerries in 1973. Secondly, I owe much to my supervisors in Cambridge, especially Mr Robert Chapman, for introducing me to the field of archaeological statistics. Finally, my principal debt is to the Trustees and sponsors of the St Andrews Institute of Maritime Archaeology, and above all its Director, Colin Martin, for providing me with the circumstances in which studies such as these can be undertaken. The shortcomings of this paper are, however,entirelymy own responsibility.
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bering the dangers of applying over-powerful methods to new fields of study, I considered that elementary procedures were more likely to achieve wide-spread comprehension and imitation. Before the undoubted potential of statistics can be fully harnessed in the service
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