SHA Particular Publication and Writer Perspective

By Mary L. Maniery, PAR Environmental Companies, Inc., President; SHA Co-Publications Affiliate Editor

Wreck Divers & Archaeologists: A Historical past of Maritime Archaeology in California (2024), Thomas N. Layton and James P. Delgado; Variety of pages: 410; 120 figures; Society for Historic Archaeology Particular Publications

ABOUT THE BOOK

Tensions between salvors and archaeologists. Questions of what archaeology can contribute past the documentary file. These are debates which have bedeviled maritime archaeology for greater than half a century. Wreck Divers and Archaeologists tackles these points. It illustrates the development of maritime archaeology from divers on the lookout for treasure to each a scientific understanding of the previous and a authorized construction for historic preservation.

This quantity paperwork the skilled development of maritime archaeology with a deal with California. It presents the private narratives of six California wreck divers, two of whose publicity to the underwater world started throughout World Struggle II, and 5 skilled archaeologists together with each the primary California State Underwater Archaeologist and his Federal counterpart, along with the angle of a Native American poet. Whereas they’d completely different targets, all the contributors are certain collectively by their curiosity in maritime historical past and linked by having touched the brig Frolic and its cargo. Frolic, probably the greatest researched shipwrecks within the Americas, was certain from Canton, China to Gold Rush San Francisco when it wrecked on California’s Mendocino County coast in the summertime of 1850.

The Frolic narratives describe the arc of United States maritime archaeology from a passion to a occupation – in addition to the instances when the arc was not easy. The transitions within the discipline, and in California maritime archaeology, are given larger depth and context with a historical past by James Delgado.

Thomas Layton and James Delgado are each previous winners of the Society for Historic Archaeology’s James Deetz award for accessible writing. Different contributors embody David Buller, Cliff Craft, Richard Everett, John Foster, Georgia Fox, Louie Fratis, James Kennon, Invoice Kosonen, Dede Marx, Linda Noel, Larry Pierson, Sheli Smith, and Della Scott-Ireton.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW

MM: What are a few of your motivations for writing/spearheading this ebook?

Tom Layton right here: As the ultimate abstract sentence of his ebook, In Small Issues Forgotten, James Deetz assumed the voices of sixteenth and seventeenth People, and wrote “Don’t learn what we’ve written; Take a look at what we’ve achieved.” Many years in the past, I underlined that sentence in my copy of Deetz’s ebook, and its reverberating echo explains why in titling Wreck Divers and Archaeologists: A Historical past of Maritime Archaeology in California, I listed wreck divers first.

Why? As a result of wreck divers found and pillaged many of the vessels wrecked in shallow waters alongside the California Coast lengthy earlier than skilled archaeologists had developed the abilities and the institutional backing to start recording and documenting these vessels. And, returning to Deetz’ highly effective abstract sentence, these wreck divers left no written file of what they’d achieved.

Thus in 1984, once I started to analysis the Frolic shipwreck, the one alternative to view and describe the artifacts representing the Frolic‘s cargo and the components of the vessel itself was to find and set up rapport with the wreck divers and to file their first-person narratives of what they’d achieved on the Frolic wreck web site. Serendipitously, these life narratives described not solely what the divers had achieved on the Frolic web site, but in addition what they’d achieved on many different California shipwrecks. These wreck diver narratives, augmented by the narratives of the archaeologists who helped to place the items again collectively, fashioned the unique core of the manuscript. Then, when Jim Delgado informed me that he had written a draft historical past of what precise maritime archaeologists had achieved in California, we immediately realized that we had the makings of a ebook!

Jim Delgado right here: I’ve been privileged to know Tom for a lot of a long time, and whereas by no means his scholar, I realized a lot from him, not solely in regards to the Frolic, however in regards to the wreck divers, a few of whom I had met. Tom’s method to Frolic was eye-opening and revelatory. Coming years after my very own interactions with that wreck, with Tom, and earlier work in California, what I realized from Tom and the way he had labored with these divers, gaining belief, listening to their tales, I used to be confronted with my very own attitudes of the previous at an early stage in my very own profession. With academic and work historical past as an historian and archaeologist, and graduate levels in each disciplines, I used to be drawn so as to add to the narrative, at Tom’s invitation. I needed to share views drawn from expertise, as to how incorrect a few of us had been – on each side – and the way time had given me a extra nuanced and mature perspective. As Mark Twain stated, “Once I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I might hardly stand to have the outdated man round. However once I received to be 21, I used to be astonished at how a lot the outdated man had realized in seven years.”

MM:  Who would you wish to learn this ebook? Who’s your viewers?

Tom Layton right here: Within the absence of formal tutorial applications, lots of our senior technology of maritime archaeologists have been sufficiently passionate not solely to coach themselves however then to pursue analysis far past their formal job descriptions. Subsequent generations of maritime archaeologists profit from formal tutorial applications offering not solely technical instruction but in addition the abilities to have interaction in significant analysis. We hope our ebook will present a historic context for the careers of that youthful viewers whose passions will energy the longer term progress of our self-discipline.

Jim Delgado right here: I need colleagues to learn this, however like Tom, I need anybody who loves the previous, who loves diving, and particularly these in search of a profession in archaeology, in addition to the assorted people on the market with their very own legacy collections from the outdated days to search out their very own Tom Layton’s and locations the place these finds can go and be curated and realized from. The period of wreck diving, like that which occurred these many a long time in the past, is now historical past itself. Whereas what occurred was not good archaeology, not all archaeological tasks are good. We do the perfect we will, and we try to do higher.

MM:  Now that you’ve got revealed this ebook, what sorts of issues are you dreaming up subsequent? What’s within the works?

Tom Layton right here: With the publication of Wreck Divers and Archaeologists, we are actually assembling a last Frolic quantity, comprised of high-resolution photographs and detailed captions supposed to current the Frolic saga in an simply accessible type, not solely to the individuals of California’s north coast, however for anybody else who has an curiosity in maritime historical past.

Jim Delgado right here: I stay energetic on a number of tasks and have a brand new ebook popping out in July, The Nice Museum of the Sea: A Human Historical past of Shipwrecks (Oxford College Press, 2025) partially builds on this ebook’s classes, in addition to others from a half century of my very own work to take a look at wrecks from numerous views and factors of view, with the essential questions being: What precisely is a shipwreck? How do individuals view shipwrecks by time, and why do they care about them? Why ought to we care now, and do any of us have all the precise solutions or are we asking the precise questions as we work together with wrecks?

SHA Publications

SHA members can order Wreck Divers and Archaeologists: A Historical past of Maritime Archaeology in California at Lulu.com for $25 (coloration $45).

The SHA Co-Publications program companions with Springer Press, College of Nebraska Press, College of Alabama Press, College of Tennessee Press, and College Press of Florida to develop our membership’s publication alternatives. The SHA additionally publishes works independently by Lulu, Amazon, and Ingram as Particular Publications.

In case you are occupied with contributing to an SHA ebook, please contact SHA’s Co-Publications Editor, Ben Ford.