Page 28 - Manual for Activities directed at the Underwater Cultural Heritage

 © Thijs Maarleveld / Jon Adams.The removal of a 19th century collier within the frame of the Slufter dredging project, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
In the Slufter dredging project
in the North Sea off Rotterdam, archaeological mitigation was integrated in the planning, although with a limited budget of no more than around 0.05% of the project realization costs.
In all, 6 historical wrecks were discovered, dating from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. All needed to be removed.The protocol for excavation was differentiated beforehand. An
18th century ship was extensively surveyed and dismantled at depth. The 19th century collier on the image below was removed in
as big a portion as possible. In contrast to the rough method
of lifting, the recovered material was carefully studied on land, producing considerable new information on shipbuilding on the English east coast in the beginning of the 19th century.
both the initiator and the authority who considers authorization. Understandably, initiators of projects will defend their interest in excavation. They tend to be very creative in finding and formulating reasons for excavation by amplifying the magnitude of vigorous threats to a site. According to their arguments, it is almost invariably better to have the sites excavated. External reasons for excavation should therefore always be complemented by substantive reasons as referred to in Rule 1. Depending on the situation, these grounds can certainly be strong and urgent enough to decide on partial or complete excavation in preference to in situ preservation in the end.
Rule 1 explicitly mentions three overall purposes for which activities directed at underwater cultural heritage can be authorized:
• a significant contribution to protection; or
• a significant contribution to knowledge; or
• a significant contribution to enhancement of
underwater cultural heritage.
These three purposes are mostly intertwined, but in- dependently each can, under certain circumstances, be reason enough for undertaking an activity directed at heritage.
The history of underwater archaeology has seen quite a few examples in which interest for the underwater cultural heritage of a certain type or period, or in a specific region, first arose through an
exemplary excavation. Sometimes these were well- planned operations whereas in other instances, they shamefully remind us of the pioneering years in archaeology. Their common charac- teristic is that long-term preserva- tion in situ was very low on the initiator’s agenda, although at the better end of the spectrum, the operations were certainly undertaken with long-
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General Principles