A Sustainable Approach for the Management and Valorization of Underwater Cultural Heritage: New Perspectives from the TECTONIC Project (original) (raw)
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On November 2, 2001, the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage provided a detailed state cooperation system and set out the basic principles for the protection of underwater cultural heritage. To date, the Convention has been ratified by 51 countries. One of the four main principles states that the In situ preservation of underwater cultural heritage should be considered as the first option before allowing or engaging in any further activities. In accordance with these principles and recommendations, in the last years many projects intended for developing and testing new techniques and tools to support In situ conservation of underwater archaeological remains have been funded and are now underway.This paper describes the contribution of the CoMAS project (In situ conservation planning of Underwater Archaeological Artifacts—http://www.comasproject.eu), funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (MIUR) and run by a partners...
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Manual for Activities directed at Underwater Cultural Heritage.
This Manual explains the thirty-six Rules of the Annex to the 2001 Convention entitled «Rules concerning activities directed at underwater cultural heritage». These Rules present a directly applicable operation scheme for underwater interventions. Over the years they have become a reference in the field of underwater archaeology.
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This paper presents a roadmap to enable the adoption of the BLUEMED model; an integrated plan developed within the BLUEMED project that promotes underwater cultural heritage (UCH) to both divers and non-divers and aims at sustainable tourism development in coastal areas and islands. Through augmented and virtual reality technologies, one can experience wet and dry diving to accessible underwater cultural heritage site(s) (AUCHS), through a physical dive at the sites or a virtual tour at Knowledge Awareness Centers (KACs). The roadmap provides guidelines, so that relevant stakeholders and competent authorities can implement the BLUEMED model and consider the various environmental, cultural, and socioeconomic factors of the area (locality), to ensure viability in the long-term. The roadmap focuses on the policy and technical parameters, including the cultural and environmental features of the site, the legislative framework, funding issues, the integration of technologies, the prospec...
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Revista de Direito Internacional, 2020
The development of modern survey, navigation, diving and remotely operated vehicle technologies contributed to the development of the maritime archaeology and the exploration and protection of shipwrecks by the official authorities of the countries but also to the accessibility of the underwater world by private persons and enterprises. The regime of the 1982 UNCLOS III has been proved absolutely counterproductive for the protection of the underwater cultural objects. The 2001 UNESCO Convention is an improvement, being though a compromise – as every international instrument. It states, that “the protection of underwater cultural heritage through in situ preservation shall be considered as the first option”. Its opponents, though, argue that it does not give the speedy response that would be needed in order to put obstacles to “the international industry of treasure hunters”. Various countries have enacted laws on the protection of underwater cultural heritage. Obviously, the differe...
Gregory, D., A.M. Eriksen, R. Pedersen, P. Jensen, M.H. Andersen, B. Davidde, M. Manders, T. Coenen, J. Dencker, C. Björdal, and B. Smith. 2014. Development of tools and techniques to survey, In ICOM-CC 17th Triennial Conference Preprints, Melbourne, 15–19 September 2014, ed. J. Bridgland, art. 2002, 7 pp. Paris: International Council of Museums. (ISBN 978-92-9012-410-8) The SASMAP project seeks to develop tools and techniques to enhance the management of underwater cultural heritage. The paper discusses those aspects of the project concerning the assessment of the site environment; assessment of the state of preservation of waterlogged archaeological wood; methods to raise fragile organic artefacts during excavation; and the use of artificial seagrass in order to stabilise sites that are preserved in situ. The project runs from 2012 to 2015 and the current paper serves as a progress report after the first year of the project.
SCIENTIFIC CULTURE, Vol. 9, No. 1, (2023), pp. 51-88, 2023
Submerged cultural heritage provides a unique opportunity to couple paleoenvironmental and culture-his-torical research with the contemporary cultural heritage needs of the public where field work takes place. Greece provides an ideal locale for developing what we refer to as maritime cultural heritage asset districts (MCHAD).Here we summarize two seasons (2019, 2021) of field survey work in the Methoni Bay region of Messenia off the southwestern Peloponnesus coast that provides an ideal locale for developing a MCHAD.A number of interdisciplinary survey tools were used to examine cultural and adaptive responses to environ-mental and cultural change in deep-time around the Methoni Bay with the aim of enhancing cultural heritage tourism in the area. Our project builds on earlier paleogeography and submerged heritage research by con-ducting: 1) non-invasive high definition shallow marine geophysics including Multibeam Echosounder, Side Scan Sonar, and Chirp sub-bottom profiler; 2)photogrammetry of several previously investigated shipwrecks and a unique submerged Middle Bronze Age/Middle Helladic (MH) settlement (2050/2000 –1750/1680 BCE) using a three camera custom rig mounted on a scuba scooter for large area coverage; 3) shallow submerged sediment sampling using scuba and diver operated coring device to study the deep-time environmental his-tory of the Methoni embayment and preliminary terrestrial coring using a Cobra percussion core drilling sys-tem; and 4) a cyber-archaeology workflow using photogrammetry and 3D laser desktopscanning tools to collaborate with a local museum to curate and disseminate research for the public.This article provides an overview of the project methods and preliminary results for melding scientific research with cultural heritage objectives.