Page 84 - Kennemerland VOC ship, 1664 - Published Reports

TheInternationalJournalofNauticalArchaeologyand UnderwaterExploration (1977), 6.3:187-218 The Kennemerland site
The third and fourth seasons 1974 and 1976, An interim report Richard Price
Heath House, Bollington Cross, Macclesfield, Cheshire
and Keith Muckelroy
Institute of Maritime Archaeology, St Andrews, Fife
Introduction
The site of the remains of the Kennemerland, a Dutch East Indiaman wrecked on the Out Skerries in 1664, was located by divers from Aston University in 1971 (Forster & Higgs, 1973; AUSAC, 1974). In 1973, an initial season of excavation was undertaken from Aston and Manchester Universities, and an interim report was issued (Price & Muckelroy, 1974). In 1974 a smaller team, oganized and directed by Richard Price, returned to the site to complete the excavation of Site F (see Fig. 1 below); a brief notice of this work was also published in this journal (Price, 1975). In 1976 a similarly organized team undertook the excavation of further areas. During both of the last two seasons, work was also undertaken on the site of another Dutch East Indiaman, De Liefde (171 l), on which a report will be issued in due course. Over this same period, the pro- ject archaeologist, Keith Muckelroy, has been undertaking the analysis of excavation data and material from the site(Muckelroy, 1975, 1976); he has also been responsible for preparing the present interim report.
This work, which involved teams of up to
six divers, occupied a period of eleven weeks
in 1974, and fifteen weeks in 1976. During shipwreck in 1664, and of the subsequent dis- both seasons, a ‘hookah’ surface demand air- putes over the ownership of the salvaged re- supply system was used, providing a relatively mains, can be found in the reports of the 1971 cheap and reliable arrangement; such systems expedition (see especially, AUSAC, 1974: 3- are being used increasingly by underwater 9). However, the ongoing background research excavators in many countries. The resulting has revealed further information which modi- virtually limitless air-supply means that bottom fies the picture in some respects. In particular, time is determined only by the demands of the a great deal more information concerning the excavations themselves, cold and, at depths of precise description and quantities of goods
10 m,
more that
Long-term team members also used rubber dry-suits, which greatly increased their endur- ance and, more importantly, their mental and physicaleffectivenessunderwater.
As with the 1973 collection, all the finds raised in 1974 and 1976 have been deposited permanently in the Shetland County Museum, Lerwick. The curator of that museum, Mr Tom Henderson, has undertaken the cleaning and conservation of all the objects placed in his custody, a marathon of patient and careful work for which he and his small staff are to be highly commended. Since this work has in- cluded the processing of several cubic metres of iron concretion, a job which is essentially one of archaeological excavation (Hamilton, 1976: 91-96), the museum staff are to be numbered among the leading excavators on this site, as well as being the project conservators. A pre- IiminaIy display of some of the finds has been
the decompression
tables.
on show in Lerwick since 1975, and a travelling exhibition including other material will be tour- ing Scotland in 1977 and 1978 under the aus- pices of the Council for Museums and Galleries in Scotland.
A summary of the historical context of the
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