Vol. 17 No. 1 Spring 2013

Museums Under the Sea

By Michael Bawaya

When Charlie Beeker began diving in 1963, historic shipwrecks were considered little more than repositories of artifacts that were there for the taking. By 1974, when he took a diving instructor course in Key Largo, Florida, most of the wrecks in the Florida Keys had been damaged by divers. Anchors and cannons served as landscape ornaments in front of restaurants and hotels along U.S. Highway One, the road running through the Keys, according to Beeker.
           
Then this seemingly hopeless situation began to change. The Abandoned Shipwreck Act was passed in 1988. As a result ownership and management of historic shipwrecks were clarified on federal, state, and tribal submerged lands. In 2000 a national system of Marine Protected Areas was established. These acts brought about major changes in the perception and preservation of shipwrecks, which were elevated from mere plunder to historical treasures.
           
Consequently, some of the treasure hunters that worked the Keys moved south to Caribbean countries like the Dominican Republic, where the pickings can be as easy as they once were in Florida and other U.S. coastal areas. For example, in the Dominican Republic treasure hunters can, with impunity, plunder wrecks under existing salvage laws so long as the government gets half the take.

So Beeker, who subsequently founded Indiana University’s (IU) Office of Underwater Science, is also working in the Dominican Republic, intent on thwarting the treasure hunters. To eradicate treasure hunting, Beeker has struck a different deal with the Dominican Republic’s government. “We’re the only ones who have come to the country and said, ‘We don’t want a 50-50 split. It all belongs to the government,’” he said. Beeker hopes to hasten its demise by turning wrecks into underwater museums.

Digging Up George Washington

By David Malakoff

Brushing teeth. Sewing. Curling a wig. Conjure an image of George Washington, Revolutionary War hero and first President of the United States of America, and it is unlikely that any of these mundane activities come to mind. For archaeologists studying the places where the great man lived and worked, however, a growing number of discoveries—including bone toothbrush handles, metal straight pins, and ceramic wig curlers—are offering a fresh glimpse into some ordinary moments in an extraordinary life.
“Through archaeology, we are continuing to learn things about George Washington that simply could not be learned any other way,” said Jed Levin, an archaeologist and chief historian at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Some of the discoveries—including the location of Washington’s boyhood home at Ferry Farm near Fredericksburg, Virginia—are helping fill in details about his often-difficult early years. Others, such as slave quarters associated with many of Washington’s residences, have helped fuel passionate discussion—and even protest—over his paradoxical role as both a freedom fighter and a slave owner. And architectural remains found at Washington’s presidential mansion in Philadelphia have even offered tantalizing hints about the origins of the modern White House’s Oval Office.
           
All told, about a half-dozen Washington-related sites, scattered from Boston, Massachusetts to the Caribbean island of Barbados, have attracted renewed attention from archaeologists over the past decade. Although scholars have scrutinized Washington’s life for nearly two centuries, “the archaeological evidence is giving us a clearer picture of who George Washington was, and how he becomes the man he became,” said David Muraca, the chief archaeologist at Ferry Farm.

Puebloan Polychrome

By Nancy Zimmerman

At the beginning of the 14th century something mysterious happened to the Ancestral Puebloans of the Southwest. Their signature black-on-white and black-on-red pottery gave way to more colorful ceramics. Whereas the earlier styles of kiva murals emphasized bichrome, abstract symbols, after A.D. 1300 paintings featured anthropomorphic figures and naturalistic treatments of space and form in vibrant, varied colors.  An explosion of colors was also seen in their rock art, baskets, and other textiles. 
 “The way people make color choices is actually fascinating,” observed archaeologist Marit Munson of Trent University in Ontario, Canada. “A key question is what happens in a society that might change the way people use color over time. For example, the Industrial Revolution affected how people used color by providing new technologies that offered a broader array of colors that could be used in new ways with a greater variety of objects.”
Though color existed in Ancestral Pueblo life before 1300, its dramatic expansion at this time suggests a similar cultural milestone. The commonly accepted theory for this change is that it resulted from the rise of the kachina religion, which some researchers believe developed in the Southwest through interaction with Mesoamerican ideas and practices.

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