Maritime Endangered Archaeology

Statement on Gaza on behalf of MarEA

As a project focused on endangered (maritime) cultural heritage, the MarEA team mourns the tragic loss of Palestinian colleagues who have actively engaged in the safeguarding and documentation of this heritage. We deplore the continued violence which has resulted in the displacement of our surviving colleagues, has irreversibly affected local …

Lost In the Tigris. The Al Qurnah Disaster Revisited

Mark Goldstone 1855: the Crimean War rages, Britain and France collaborate, propping up a fading Ottoman Empire to defeat Russia. In Mesopotamia there has been an archaeological outbreak of cooperation. Old European rivals are surprisingly collegiate in their quest to find and excavate the ancient sites of Assyria and Babylon …

How MENA is Leading the Way in Maritime Archaeology Multilateralism

The 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage (UCH) marked a momentous culmination of decades of negotiation among the community of nations. The vote was overwhelming, with eighty-seven votes in favour, four against, and fifteen abstentions (fig.1). Yet, the more than two decades since has been …

Joining forces: Integrating Maritime Cultural Heritage into Protected Landscape Management

by MarEA team The coastal zones of the MENA region are subject to high paced development and changes with both anthropogenic and natural causes. The Maritime Endangered Archaeology (MarEA) Project rapidly and comprehensively documents and assess threats and damages to the maritime and coastal heritage of the Middle East and …

Documenting a shipwreck in the intertidal zone in Essaouira, Morocco

by Azzedine Karra & Athena Trakadas In Morocco, archaeological sites in the coastal zone are becoming more visible due to clearer satellite imagery taken at sometimes very frequent intervals in Google Earth (GE). In several instances, GE imagery extends back almost 20 years. The population of the Morocco MarEA database …

Threats of Climate Change on Coastal Archaeology. Case Study: Siraf, Iran

by Guy Entwistle This article looks to give a brief synopsis on a Masters Thesis produced this summer for the Maritime Archaeology programme at the University of Southampton. ‘Coasts are dynamic, but historic assets are fixed’ (Murphy 2009:9) Introduction  The thesis examined the threats posed by natural and anthropogenic climate …

Examining Oman’s cyclonic activity and its impact on maritime cultural heritage- Student Project

By Eva Perez Chirinos De Andres Introduction Oman’s Cyclone Activity Project is part of the Digital Archaeology Research Programme (Spring 2021) undertaken by students from the Institute of Archaeology at University College London. This programme collaborates with the MarEA Project in the collection and analysis of digital archaeological information. In …

Archaeology and Climate Change: New Challenges to Fieldwork in the Middle East

(ASOR 2020 Workshop) by Georgia Andreou MarEA has recently presented two papers at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Overseas Research. A paper was delivered in Cultural Heritage: Preservation, Presentation and Management session, examining capacity building in maritime archaeology in the Near East. A second paper was part …