Project SAMPHIRE

Crowd Sourcing Maritime Archaeology data off Scotland's West Coast

Bibliographic Data

ID12807663
AuthorsJ McCarthy (0000-0002-7449-9508, Flinders University, corresponding author), Jonathan Benjamin (0000-0003-2702-6254, Flinders University)
Year2017
Volume14
Issue2
Pages267-290
Publication date2017-11-16
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1556-4894 • E-ISSN: 1556-1828
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/15564894.2017.1387620
OpenAlexW2770429526
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited15

Perhaps the greatest barrier to effective management of underwater cultural heritage is the lack of data on the nature and location of offshore archaeological resources. This is a problem shared with terrestrial archaeology, but is particularly acute due to the limitations of survey techniques in the underwater environment. In Scotland <15% of known ship losses from the last 200 years have been located and the record is far less comprehensive for earlier periods, verging on a near total data gap. Most known archaeological sites in Scottish waters have been discovered through large-scale sonar survey of relatively low resolution and a considerable bias has been introduced in the archaeological record; this has favored the discovery and documentation of larger and more recent, often upstanding, metal shipwrecks. This article presents the methods and results from a three-year project designed to reduce this bias by demonstrating large-scale prospecting for maritime archaeology through a community-based crowd-sourcing approach. Project SAMPHIRE (the Scottish Atlantic Maritime Past: Heritage, Investigation, Research and Education Project) was geographically focused on the west coast of the Scottish mainland and was undertaken between 2013 and 2015, resulting in a large number of new archaeological discoveries, including shipwrecks, aircraft, and other material of a much more varied nature than what is typically found through large-scale hydrographic surveys

Archaeology · Geography · Maritime archaeology · West coast · Archaeological Research and Protection · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · History · Maritime and Coastal Archaeology · Geology · Oceanography