| She is one of 15 underwater archaeology trainees from Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Each has an interesting background, each of them different, but one thing they share is a passion for discovering and helping to protect the region’s underwater cultural heritage.
Under the auspices of UNESCO and the Government of Thailand, with funding from the Royal Norwegian Government, this class is engaged in a six-week intensive programme on the basics of underwater archaeology and cultural heritage management through lectures and field work, including a two-week survey of the “Mannok Site”.
The iron steamship Ruea Mail liesin the Gulf of Thailand near Mannok Island, in Thailand’s Rayong province. Today, where the boat rests on a mostly sandy bottom at 18-20 metres, underwater visibility extends only about two metres.
In this light, from this perspective, the Ruea Mail looms dark and mysterious. It might be easy to imagine shadowy, half-seen things swaying in the slight current are ghosts. But Duang and the other students have no time for such fantasies just now. They’re working.
Not only must they focus on what they’re doing, they try to remain alert to sea urchins, stonefish, and moray eels. And there’s more, said Erbprem Vatcharangkul, Director of the Underwater Archaeology Division of the Fine Arts Department of Thailand. Other potential concerns include entanglements with abandoned fishing nets, lines, and fish traps; snags on the wreck’s superstructure; and air supply.
Some of the trainees, Duang among them, are experienced divers; others learned scuba only at the start of this course.
“But these students are professionals, experts in their fields,” said course instructor Ross Anderson.
“Some are already managing marine heritage in their home countries. What we’re doing here is capacity building, giving them the tools and skills they need to do their jobs better,” he said.
Archaeology, whether on land or under the sea, can be fascinating detective work. But marine archaeologists need the range of standard archaeological skills plus all those associated with diving and underwater surveying.
The curriculum includes the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage and its Annex, introduction to underwater archaeology, underwater archaeological resource protection and management, data management, 3D site survey, Asian shipbuilding, ethnographic boat recording, Asian ceramics, museology, in‐situ protection and preservation, significance and assessment, and risk mitigation.
The student surveys, five-person teams assigned to the bow, midships, and stern areas of the wreck respectively, use tape measurements and planning frames together with underwater photography and video to establish what they can about the Reua Mail. They are concerned primarily with problems of underwater search and survey, team logistics, and data management. Actual excavation and salvage are not part of this course, which aims to leave the site undisturbed.
The significance of the wreck remains to be determined. So far, archaeologists know it was a French vessel from the colonial period and, judging by coins found associated with it, it went down around 1917, probably en route between Viet Nam and Thailand. No one knows why it sank — finding evidence to decide this is just one task among many for these students.
And the Ruea Mail site is just one of an estimated three million marine heritage sites worldwide, many of these in the Asia-Pacific region, most of them yet to be discovered, let alone surveyed. Recent developments, meanwhile, are exposing sites to such pressures as ever-increasing damage from recreational divers and predation from treasure hunters (see the accompanying box).
Ricardo Favis, project coordinator at UNESCO, Bangkok said: “Modern technology such as subterranean vehicles and better-equipped divers have enabled treasure hunters to pillage the ocean floors of valuable artefacts, and all countries in the region have had their maritime areas exploited.”
Thus the protection of marine heritage is assuming new urgency. At the same time, underwater archaeology remains a relatively new discipline.
Priorities in landlocked Lao PDR include surveying new river and lake sites; developing an underwater archaeology academic programme; seeking funds for more human resources and for diving and electronic survey equipment; and public education.
More immediate tangible benefits can also follow. “The economic value of shipwrecks doesn’t lie merely in the treasure. These sites can serve as cultural and tourism attractions, while directly or indirectly generating income for local people,” said instructor Ross Anderson. (See accompanying box.)
The Reua Mail and a number of other wreck sites lie conveniently close to both the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Regional Field Training Centre in Underwater Cultural Heritage, established in early 2009, and the National Maritime Museum, in Chanthaburi — which helps to explain why UNESCO chose to run the course in Thailand.
As the Fine Art Department’s Mr. Erbprem said: “We have the resources — good people; good facilities including a museum of marine archaeology and a new diving boat; good sites for training; and very good government support, compared to other countries.”
Mr. Erbprem said the Thai government understands the issues, and plans to ratify the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, and to provide funding and other support in future.
Indeed, one important aim of the project is to prepare Member States for ratification and implementation of the 2001 Convention and its Annex. At the same time, it provides an effective means of networking among Member States, where information exchange and shared best practices inform conservation and management of a shared regional heritage.
In this spirit, Mr. Erbprem will be collaborating with UNESCO and other concerned experts in organizing another six-week foundation course in March and April 2010, one with the same broad curriculum. In November of 2010, a more specialized course will focus on remote sensing.
“With this one,” Mr. Erbprem said, “the students, including the best of those from the basic courses, will survey for new sites, then dive to see what they’ve got — comparing what they’ve seen on the monitors aboard the boat and what they see underwater with their own eyes.”
Riding on the success of the first basic course, the training centre — with input from the International Committee on Underwater Cultural Heritage of the International Council on Monuments and Sites —is positioned to become a “Centre of Excellence” for the Asia-Pacific region.
Written by Collin Piprell Contact: culture@unescobkk.org | | Marine heritage can also generate sustainable local incomes “Diving tourism and marine museums are two attractions that can generate earnings for local populations in marine heritage site areas. One notable example is the Truk Lagoon, in Micronesia, with its massive collection of over 50 submerged World War II ship and aircraft wrecks. In the past, locals had salvaged sunken ammunition and used it for fishing. (Which explains the number of one-armed fishermen in the area.) However, international tourists in the form of recreational divers have also turned the submerged wrecks into Truk’s main source of income, and local dive operators now strictly ensure that artefacts are not removed from the sites. While such “underwater museums” are fantastic for scuba divers, land-based museums are tourist attractions that interpret underwater sites and artefacts, providing the non-diving public a glimpse into the wealth of knowledge that comes from the study and preservation of underwater cultural heritage. Thus, unlike treasure hunting activities that remove and sell as much of historic wrecks as quickly as possible for the maximum return, underwater archaeology, wrecksites and museums can provide a sustainable economic return for local dive and tourism operators, and local communities.”
Ross Anderson, UNESCO course instructor, President of the Australasian Institute of Marine Archaeology, instructor in marine archaeology at the University of Western Australia, and Assistant Curator, Maritime Archaeology, Western Australian Museum. … |
| First Foundation Course UNESCO Asia-Pacific Regional Field Training Centre on Underwater Cultural Heritage In October and December last year (of 2009), UNESCO and the Thai Ministry of Culture’s Fine Arts Department conducted a six-week, Royal Norwegian Government-funded training project dedicated to the preservation of underwater cultural heritage in Asia and the Pacific. The foundation course was supervised by Mr. Erbprem Vatcharangkul, Director of the Underwater Archaeology Division (UAD), with valuable input from the leading professional network in underwater archaeology, the International Committee on Underwater Cultural Heritage of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS-ICUCH). The project also employed training expertise from the Nautical Archaeology Society, based in the United Kingdom, and members of the Asian Academy for Heritage Management network, including Silpakorn University (Thailand) and Flinders University (Australia). |
| Marine cultural heritage: Why the concern? Underwater archaeology sites — most of them not yet identified, much less surveyed or excavated — have much to tell us about how our civilizations have evolved. Water covers more than 70 per cent of the earth’s surface; seacoasts and inland waterways, serving as natural transport and communications routes, have long shaped human migration and settlement patterns. Meanwhile, natural forces such as storms, changing currents, coastal erosion, climate change, and earthquakes have submerged entire coastlines and communities; silt has buried ports and harbours, while war and other human misadventure have done their part to consign an estimated three million vessels or more to the bottom of seas, lakes, and rivers worldwide. Until recently, most of this human record remained a closed book for archaeology. But modern technology, including improved diving apparatus and advanced remote-sensing equipment such as magnetometers, GPS, and side-scan radar, is making more and more of these sites accessible to exploration. This development, however, suggests both good news and bad. First, the good news. More of our marine heritage is being revealed, and submerged structures and artefacts are often better preserved than their land counterparts. This is partly due to underwater conditions that can slow degradation of artefacts, and partly because shipwrecks and other submerged sites, at least until recently, usually lay beyond the range of tourists and treasure hunters. In addition, rather than presenting a long accumulation of archaeological evidence, as land sites generally do, underwater sites can serve as time capsules, effectively freezing a point in time. The bad news? Marine heritage sites have yet to enjoy the same public awareness and protection often enjoyed by land sites. At the same time, the technological advances that make archaeological research possible have also brought deeper and deeper sites, over broader and broader areas, within range of sports divers and treasure hunters. Together, these factors suggest the urgency of public education targetting everyone from students to tourists, tourism operators, fishermen, and government policy-makers. | |
