Archaeologists recover mediaeval shipwreck from Lake Constance
Archaeologists have finished recovering a 600-year-old ship from Lake Constance discovered near a mediaeval Benedictine abbey, the state of Baden-Württemberg announced on Thursday.
A ice skater reported the shallow wreck off the lake’s Reichenau Island in the winter of 2006 and subsequent dives and carbon testing by archaeologists revealed it was from the 14th century.
“We believe it could be the oldest shipwreck ever found in the lake,” spokesperson for the Stuttgart regional commission Dr. Peter Zaar told The Local. “There is one other boat we know is also from the 14th century, but we need more testing to know for sure.”
An ice skater???
UPDATE: Per the comments, see this page on the vicissitudes of preserving waterlogged wooden structures. The Vasa is actually a really neat wreck. It was a brand spankin’ new ship and it sank pretty close to shore. It was pretty much forgotten, even the location, until some guy spent a few years rowing around the general area and dropping a small corer down to the bottom until it came back up with wood.
mikem | 08-Nov-09 at 2:31 am | Permalink
Ice skater makes sense to me. What doesn’t is this: “Dr. Dietrich Hakelberg from the Seemuseum Kreuzlingen will lead examinations. Afterwards the ship will be returned to a deeper resting place at the lake floor near Reichenau Island where it will be best preserved, Zaar said.”
What is that about? Is that political correctness overtaking archaeology or is there a school of thought in your field that thinks science is best served by returning found objects back to nature?
acagle | 08-Nov-09 at 10:45 am | Permalink
I’ve actually argued for keeping stuff in the ground as a desired option. After all, unless it’s in immediate danger that’s where it’s been happily preserved all these years anyway.
mikem | 08-Nov-09 at 11:17 am | Permalink
But isn’t that stuff that you are leaving to later excavation teams, (like selected areas of a dig site deliberately left to future archaeologists and their advanced equipment) rather than objects that have been recovered, cleaned, dated and examined and then placed back in the ground?
I mean, I could understand why they might leave it where it’s at, lacking funds for a proper excavation, but…
Anyway, thanks for answering the question.
acagle | 09-Nov-09 at 11:31 am | Permalink
Well, admittedly, it’s a bit out of the ordinary to actually put stuff back. OTOH, I suppose it depends on the situation altogether. It would take quite a bit of money to preserve it (either a large tank to keep it wet or saturating it with polyethylene glycol), you’d need room to store it, who knows if it would be worth displaying, etc. They’re putting it back in deeper water (one assumes anoxic) so one would assume it doesn’t have enough significance to go through the whole preservation process on land.