Recovery of Fragile Objects from Underwater Archaeological Excavations: New Materials and Techniques by SASMAP Project

Underwater archaeological excavation represents a traumatic and essentially destructive event in the history of artefacts, especially organic, and its underwater context. Indeed, due to their fragility, organic archaeological materials from underwater sites can be challenging to excavate, support, raise and transport to conservation facilities. This is due to the inherent difficulties of working underwater (limited time and potentially harsh conditions) and in particular the crucial stage of lifting artefacts from the seabed to the surface where mechanical damage can easily occur. Block lifting of fragile archaeological materials is a useful procedure often adopted on land excavations and allows the collection of information which could be irretrievably lost during more rapid excavation. This procedure could be used with success to recover fragile objects on an archaeological underwater excavation thanks to the new materials and techniques tested and adopted in the SASMAP project (http://sasmap.eu) as will be discussed.