Page 74 - Kennemerland VOC ship, 1664 - Published Reports

NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, 6.1
But the importance of understanding the
physical environment of a wreck site is not
limited to its relevance in assessing the likely
quality of the survivingremains. In land archae-
ology, the study of a site’s environment is now
a major element in any excavation, in some
cases to an extent which overshadows the study
of the artefactual evidence, and threatens to
elevate the bathwater to the same status as the
baby. These studies are undertaken partly in
order to investigate the reasons for the survival
of the evidence, but, more important, in order
to understand the surroundings within which
the inhabitants of the site were living. The
demands of a wreck site, the product of an
unforeseen catastrophe rather than of a consci-
ous intention, are somewhat different, but from personal experience of the sites (in nine
there is a parallel interest. It is only through an understanding of the physical attribute of a site that the wrecking of the ship itself can be inves- tigated, a study which is essential if the observed remains are to be related in some way to the vessel which produced them.
The following sections, which look at the evidence available from recent work in British waters, lead to some conclusions which con- siderably qualify the general principles out- lined above. It must be noted that these conclusions can be only as secure as the infor- mation on which they are based, and in particu- lar that they are probably influenced by any bias, conscious or unconscious, in the type of wreck site which has so far received attention. This bias has been counteracted slightly by the consideration of a few sites which have not attracted extensive excavation t o date. It should also be noted that the consideration is limited to wooden ships; the processes involved in the wrecking and survival of metahhips are certainly very different, and should be con- sidered separately.
2. A general classifcation of British wreck sites If one looks at the situations of the two dozen
or so British wrecks which have been investi- gated and described over the past decade, it is immediately apparent that the great majority of sites are neither perfectly preserved, nor totally broken up, but are of an ‘intermediate’ nature. In order to facilitate further discussion, I have identified five different classes of survival of archaeological material into which these sites
48
cases) through to unsatisfactory publications in newspapers and other ephemera; at the very least, I hope this paper will encourage archaeo- logists to include overall assessments of their sites in their initial reports, no matter how pro- visional their conclusions may be. However, I remain reasonably confident that I have been able to interpret the available information, in the light of experience, in such a way that no fundamental mis-attributions have resulted. The locations of the sites mentioned are indi- cated by the appropriate numbers on Fig. 1, which incidently serves to illustrate how unevenly recent work has been distributed around the British Isles.
class 1. These sites are those on which sub- stantial coherent ship’s structure has survived, and include the Amsterdam (1 5) (Marsden, 1974), the Anne, the Mary Rose (1 1) (McKee, 1973), and the newly discovered late-18th century wreck in the South Edinburgh Channel. Perhaps the most outstanding way in which these all deviate from the classic Dumas wreck formation is that they are all in relatively shallow water, even, in the cases of the Amsterdam and the Anne, appearing above water at low spring tides. They show that, in favourable conditions, a ship can sink into the substrate sufficiently quickly to gain protection before it begins to break up. There has also been a complete absence so far in British waters of the classic Mediterranean wreck mound, although there seems to be no obvious reason why examples should n6t have developed in
seem to group themselves naturally, thus effec- tively identifying three main types of ‘inter- mediate’ site (Classes 2 to 4). The practice of so classifying information intuitively at the start of an investigation has been criticized, with per- fect validity, by several writers on archaeologi- cal theory (see, for example, Doran & Hodson, 1975: 158-9); however, it would seem reason- able in this case to clarify the situation in this way, especially since the number of entities involved is comparatively small. As is indicated below (p. 50), when this material is involved in a statistical analysis, a more objective arrange- ment of the data is employed. In the assign- ment of sites to classes, I have had to rely on greatly varying degrees of information, varying