***UASC October 2022 MEETING****
Wednesday, October 26th @ 07:00 PM CST – Meeting of Underwater Archaeological Society of Chicago
Featured Presenter: John O'Shea is the Curator of Great Lakes Archaeology at the University of Michigan
Museum of Anthropological Archaeology and Professor in the Department of Anthropology
Presenting: What’s in a Name? Vessel Identification and the Archaeology of Shipwrecks
Meeting timetable:
Social: 06:30 – 07:00 PM CST, Business Meeting: 07:00 – 08:00 PM, Presentations: 08:00 – 09:00 PM CST (or later, if necessary)
In Person at:
CHICAGO MARITIME MUSEUM
1200 West 35th Street, River Level
Chicago, Illinois 60609
773-376-1982
On Zoom:
What’s in a Name? Vessel Identification and the Archaeology of Shipwrecks
When a new wreck is discovered, perhaps the single most important task for the researcher is determining the vessel’s name. Once identified, a wealth of historical and contextual information can be linked to the vessel, such as the name of its captain, its cargo, its history, and it’s never reached destination. But what happens when there is no name painted on the transom or imprinted on fixtures? There are numerous examples in the Great Lakes where largely intact wrecks remain unidentified, or even worse, been misidentified. And what about wrecks that have been badly broken up and scattered during and after the wrecking process? At this point, the investigation becomes less a historical problem and more one familiar to archaeologists. In this talk, I will consider shipwrecks as an archaeological, rather than purely historical, problem and consider some methods that are used to determine the identity of lost vessels.
Biography:
John O'Shea is the Curator of Great Lakes Archaeology at the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology and Professor in the Department of Anthropology. He has a BA in Anthropology from the University of Nebraska, a Diploma in Prehistoric Archaeology from Oxford University, and received his PhD in Prehistoric Archaeology from Cambridge University. He has directed major field projects focused on Bronze Age societies in Hungary, Romania, and Serbia, and on late prehistoric cultures in North America. He is also actively engaged in underwater archaeology, where his research involves both historic shipwrecks and submerged prehistoric sites in the Great Lakes.
Thanks,
Scott Reimer
UASC President
Email: