An invaluable source of data for archaeologists, shipwrecks provide information on many aspects of trade and daily life.
Nearly three-quarters of the earth’s surface is covered by water. Water at various times in history has been both a barrier and an aide to civilization. Many of the earliest civilizations in history quickly adapted to their proximity to water and used the nearby waterways for irrigation, contact with others, and trade.
Trade has been an important part of past and present civilizations, and boats played an integral part in this trade for many reasons. Until the modern era, it was always less expensive to transport trade goods over water than by land. For example, in the Roman period it was cheaper to transport goods from Egypt to Rome across the Mediterranean than to transport them inland in Italy only seventy-five miles. Boats could also carry large, bulky objects much easier than teams of animals or men and were often the only way to move extremely heavy items, such as obelisks in Egypt. Boats can travel faster than animals for longer periods and can reach areas inaccessible by foot, such as islands.
For these reasons, most trade typically moved from place to place over water whenever it could, whether by river, sea, or ocean. In the last 5,000 years, this process of shipping goods over water naturally resulted in some of the vessels being lost because of weather, geography, or human error. These losses have resulted in hundreds of thousands of shipwrecks that litter the inland waterways and ocean floors.
When a ship meets with a catastrophic end and sinks suddenly, it proves to be an invaluable source of data for archaeologists. A shipwreck provides a snapshot into the past since it preserves the single moment in time that it sank. This provides valuable information about the vessel and the way it was used. It also provides archaeological information about what it carried aboard at the time of sinking in the form of cargo, crew, and all else that was carried onboard (commercial goods, weapons and armaments, and personal items). As the field of underwater archaeology has developed over the last fifty years, researchers have become more skilled in the excavation and interpretation of these shipwrecks.
One avenue of inquiry in which shipwrecks play an integral role is in better understanding trade routes. An excavated shipwreck often provides a complete collection of the commercial items onboard. The pottery recovered from a shipwreck can reveal the ship’s stops on its voyage. This can help demonstrate trading routes, commercial links between certain cities, and the type of goods traded. Quantifying the number and location of wreck sites can also lead to conclusions concerning importance of shipping during specific periods and in specific regions. The risk that must be kept in mind when doing this type of analysis is that the shipwrecks found might not be representative of the shipping during their time, or that underwater work in certain areas might be proceeding faster than in other areas that might reveal far different results.
R. Scott Moore
See also: Navigation.
Delgado, James P., ed. Encyclopedia of Underwater and Maritime Archaeology. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.