ou8acracker2
Full Member
- Apr 5, 2012
- 159
- 50
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
The Wealth of Knowledge - St Augustine Light House
LAMP used the research vessel Roper, on loan from the Institute of Maritime History, during its June field school, when a team of archaeologists, college students, and volunteers excavated an 18th century shipwreck and raised two cannons. A few weeks ago, while on the research vessel Roper while...
www.staugustinelighthouse.org
"She had wanted to write an article on archaeology and treasure hunting in St. Augustine. I immediately saw red flags when I first heard this, as the confusion between these two contradictory practices is a common misunderstanding among members of the public. Underwater archaeology is very different from treasure hunting. The former involves systematic scientific investigations of shipwrecks or other maritime sites to seek knowledge about the past, while the latter is concerned with salvaging shipwrecks in search of materials that can be sold for a profit. Careful recording, documentation, and forensic analyses–procedures which cost time and money and prevent archaeology from being a profitable venture in a commercial sense–ensure that as a site is literally destroyed through excavation, scientists can maximize the amount of knowledge gained which can be received in no other way. Over the last few decades treasure hunting in Florida has, alas, resulted in the loss of a vast amount of knowledge that could have been saved, if archaeology had been conducted.
Got a chuckle out of this.
