Page 78 - Kennemerland VOC ship, 1664 - Published Reports

NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, 6.1
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deposited, since consideration is limited to sites where at least some remains have been found; if we were seeking to explain sites an which no material has survived at all, it seems likely that these factors might be more relevant. Finally, it is worth noting that the correlation for attri- bute 4 is in fact negative; this attribute has been ranked in terms of increasing speed of tidal stream, which seems a reasonable approach, but that factor must have such little relevance to the survival of remains that the correlation in fact went in the contrary direction.
Not surprisingly, the strongest correlations have proved to be those between the nature of the sea-bed (topography and the constitution of the deposit, attributes 9, 10 and 11) and the archaeological quality of the sites, which con- firms the basic approach of earlier writers. Their error was rather in considering two undifferentiated types of sea-bed, rocky and sandy, as two opposed norms, when there are in fact many gradations between the two, which are reflected closely in the degree of survival of the remains contained within them. The only site which is seriously out of line in the
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the marked distinction between those site attributes which are significantly correlated above the 0.1% level with the archaeological characteristics (numbers 9, 10 and l l ) , those which are significantly correlated at above the 5% level (numbers 2 and 8), and the rest of the attributes, some of which achieve very low values of correlation indeed. Among this last group, the common denominator seems to be the influence of water movement on the site, in terms of either fetch (number l), the frequency of stormy weather (number 3), the strength of tidal currents (number 4),or the seventy of the operation of these forces, which varies with depth (numbers 5 to 7). The conclusion must
be that, once initial deposition has been made, these forces have little effect on the subsequent fate of a site. It seems likely that the influence of algae cover is relevant here, in that it pro- tects deposits in just those exposed situations which might otherwise prove unsatisfactory for survival. In a way, it reduces the difference in ‘severity’ between open and protected coasts. It must also be remembered that we are discussing only the survival of material once it has been
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