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Shipwrecks! - TAS 177
348 Plays3 years ago
Randomly, there were lots of shipwreck stories in the news this week, so we decided to do a themed episode! First up, we have a story about a shipwreck recovery off the coast of Oregon. Then we move over to a viking age shipyard that was discovered in Sweden. And finally, the excavation of a ship from the middle ages presents a unique challenge to archaeologists.
Connect with James on Twitter: @paleoimaging
Links
- Legendary Spanish galleon shipwreck discovered on Oregon coast
- 'First of its Kind' Viking Age Shipyard Discovered at Birka, a Swedish World Heritage Site
- Press Release from Stockholm University: Unique Viking Age Shipyard discovered at Birka
- The Report: En vikingatida varvsplats vid Kugghamn, Birka: Arkeologiska undersökningar av L2022:2719, Birka, Björkö,Adelsö socken, Uppland, augusti 2020 och 2021
- Archaeologists race against time to study crumbling 1,300-year-old shipwreck
- TAS Vikings Episode
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- chris@archaeologypodcastnetwork.com
- Rachel Roden
- rachel@unraveleddesigns.com
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast Network
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to The Archaeology Show. TAS goes behind the headlines to bring you the real stories about archaeology and the history around us. Welcome to the podcast.
Episode Introduction: Shipwrecks Theme
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello and welcome to The Archaeology Show, episode 177.
Long Beach, Washington: New Location Discussion
00:00:20
Speaker
Today's show is an absolute shipwreck. Let's dig a little deeper and deeper and deeper under the sea where all the shipwrecks are there for me.
00:00:35
Speaker
All right. Welcome to the show. How's it going? Pretty good. We are in, we've moved again. New, new place. We're in Long Beach, Washington this time.
Kite Festival and Personal Experiences
00:00:44
Speaker
World's longest beach. Although they say, but that's quite a claim and we have not vetted it at all. And like, what does it actually mean? Cause Long Beach is a town. So is it the longest beach within a town's limits or Oh, I'm sure there's some kind of qualification. Yeah.
00:01:04
Speaker
because I was just surfing around on Apple Maps on my iPad while watching TV one night in Kamchatka. As you do. Yeah, I was in Kamchatka this time. There are some long beaches, right? It just goes for miles. So what counts as the world's longest beach? I don't know. What are the criteria? Yeah. Yeah, who knows?
00:01:24
Speaker
Well, Long Beach is home to the International Kite Festival, which is in August. And I was just looking at the dates for that. And I think we might be able to make that work. Oh, really? Possibly. Yeah. So we'll have to see. But anyway, I love flying kites and it's not just like your normal, you know, pyramid like a kid. Yeah.
00:01:44
Speaker
I have a rigid delta wing stunt kite that I bought. It was actually given to me on my 18th birthday, I think, by my dad. We both fly kites. I still have
Shipwrecks: Setting the Scene
00:01:54
Speaker
that one. It's really old. I don't fly it as often, though, because when you crash it, you break a spar. It's annoying if you'll get a new one. But I have another one that's a three and a half meter wide, which is about 10 feet. A little more than 10 feet. Parafoil style. Yeah, and that one's really good. And you've got a smaller paraphile one. Yes, I have a little one. And the smaller doesn't mean it's easier to fly. That thing's like a hummingbird.
00:02:13
Speaker
It is, but it's not as hard pulling on your body. I've tried to fly yours a couple of times and it literally drags me around the beach. Me too, I'm big. It's a hard one to fly, but my little one is fun because you can control it better.
00:02:29
Speaker
Anyway, we digress. So anyway, I'm just saying all that because there's a lot of beach here and we are just north of the Columbia River. In fact, if you kind of just like head out a little ways, you can kind of see Oregon.
Oregon Shipwreck: Historical Significance
00:02:43
Speaker
I think Astoria is like a 20 minute drive. Yeah, we could easily go to Astoria.
00:02:47
Speaker
Another thing that easily went into Astoria and probably onto this beach was pieces of ship and beeswax for the last few hundred years. And why is that? Yeah. So this is a bit of a themed week we've got going on here. It's new stories like we like to do. But for some reason, there are just a ton of stories about various different shipwrecks in the news. So this one is what kind of kicked it off for us. And this shipwreck is so cool. And then we've got two more stories coming after that.
00:03:17
Speaker
All shipwrecks. All shipwrecks. This entire episode is like a shipwreck. Oh, it could be. We'll see. Just as an aside, when I was in the Navy, shipmate is what you call people. But of course, the slang term for people just to piss them off was like shipwreck. Shipwreck. Like, listen, shipwreck. Oh my God, that's my new name for you, shipwreck. Actually, I think you've called me that before and I didn't even realize like what you were doing.
00:03:41
Speaker
No, listen shipwreck. Oh my God, I hate you more than I hated you before. Anyway, so, okay. So let's talk about this shipwreck that was discovered here on the, it's on the Oregon coast technically, but actually very close to where we are physically. Cause we're right on the edge of Washington here. So in 1693, there was a ship carrying silk and beeswax from the Philippines to Mexico. And like sometimes happens in the treacherous world of shipping in the 1600s, it disappeared.
00:04:10
Speaker
Now there are timbers that have been recovered off the coast of Oregon near Manzanita and it has been confirmed that those timbers are part of the ship. Now I was, my first thought was like off the coast of Oregon, this ship was going from the Philippines to Mexico and it ended up way up in Oregon. Like that had to be quite a storm to blow it off course that much.
00:04:31
Speaker
That's crazy. The Philippines is in the Pacific, of course. And when you've got a ship that is subject to winds and tides, they didn't have a motor. Maybe it kind of has a squirrely course to get there. Well, I'm willing to bet they just followed the circular tidal system that is in the winds as well. They go clockwise in the Pacific. And I believe they go clockwise in the Atlantic as well, which is what brings warm air up through the Gulf and the East Coast and what brings cold air down from Alaska.
00:05:01
Speaker
and which is why the water and the air temperature is relatively cool here on the coast versus warm. So ships would have, you know, just to be able to sail and not get stuck in the middle where there's,
Spanish Galleon and Trade Goods
00:05:12
Speaker
you know, little wind. They're taking like an arched route. Yeah, they're taking a longer route. Plus there's a concept in, you learn in aviation called the Great Circle route, which is you don't just go from point to point on a map when you're going these long distances.
00:05:23
Speaker
You actually put a big circle around the globe and that point to point is actually the most efficient way. And sometimes that means you're going over the pole in a plane. Yeah, that's why on airplanes you see, you actually are way further north when you're on an airplane on a long flight than you think.
00:05:39
Speaker
Yeah, if you're going New York to London, you don't fly New York to London across the Atlantic. You fly more over Greenland and then come down because it's actually shorter to do that. All right, I guess it makes sense that maybe it was close to Oregon when it wrecked.
00:05:57
Speaker
So these timbers that they found, there were about a dozen of them and they were recovered from some sea caves off the Oregon coast near Manzanita, like I said. And they are believed to be from the Santa Cristi de Burgos, which is a Spanish galleon.
00:06:13
Speaker
And this, just a little bit information on what a Spanish galleon is, this particular one is a Manila galleon. And these are huge boats, they're 150 feet long, they're super sturdy, and they hardly have a wreck. They don't really find wrecks of these ships very often. And it's a European ship style, I guess you could say, and of course it was designed and built in Asia, so things haven't changed much in the last.
00:06:36
Speaker
400 years. That's still happening. So, yeah. Did you see why it's called a Manila gown? Is that because it's like tan in color or? You're such a dork. I'm just wondering. You and your dad jokes.
00:06:55
Speaker
Did they have like, I don't know. Oh my God. Welcome to my life people. Okay. So the cargo included costly Chinese silk porcelain and blocks of this beeswax, which is why it's called the beeswax wreck. And they thought that the wreck had happened somewhere in this area because these chunks of beeswax that have the Spanish markings on them. So they know that the beeswax. Yeah.
00:07:20
Speaker
was something to do with Spain and probably going to Mexico or whatever. So they, and these blocks of it have been washing up on shore here in Oregon and probably most of the Oregon coast, basically. And they've been washing up there for centuries. Yeah, probably up here too. They've been washing up for centuries. So they knew it was around here somewhere and it actually got the name of the beeswax wreck because of that reason, which I love that.
00:07:40
Speaker
Yeah, and if you're wondering, why the hell are they shipping beeswax? Bees are actually not native to the Americas.
Beeswax Trade and Native American Histories
00:07:46
Speaker
I know. I had no idea. Crazy, right? Yeah. Well, at least the bees for this kinds of beeswax, there must have been... I actually want to do a little more research on this. There must be some kind of bee over here. Something's pollinating plants.
00:07:58
Speaker
Maybe wasps or stuff like that are our native species. Yeah. But not all of them produce like the beeswax and the honey that we need. And the reason they needed the wax is because this is a Catholic country. Mexico at the time, of course, was very Catholic and they needed the beeswax to make the candles for the Catholic ceremonies. I love that. Like that's why they needed the beeswax for the many other reasons that beeswax is good for. Well, I mean, candles in general, obviously were very necessary at that time period, not having power, obviously. So,
00:08:29
Speaker
But the Catholics, they went through a lot of candles. And so these chunks of beeswax that were washing up on shore, the natives sort of picked up on the fact that they were useful. Yeah. And that they were good for trading valuable. Yeah. And so they would use them for trading. So there's also like these oral histories of natives of the area that, that found this stuff and they were able to use it for trading. So
00:08:51
Speaker
Finding this wreck actually kind of validates some of the oral stories and the oral histories of the Native Americans of the areas, which I think they actually really liked knowing that when they say that they used to trade beeswax in their stories, that that was like an actual thing that they did do. One thing that I thought was cool too is, you know, while this isn't necessarily a Chinese ship, I mean, it was, you know, Chinese made and they were coming from that area. Yeah.
00:09:18
Speaker
It's really cool thinking about traveling back in that time because unlike now where we just go pick up souvenirs and crap that we don't really need, people really had just like an eclectic assemblage of things if they were world travelers like this and even sailors on ships like this because other things that were washing up onto shore were fragments of the typical blue and white Chinese porcelain that a lot of us have seen, especially archaeologists.
00:09:44
Speaker
And then other artifacts from different areas, which you really have to understand stuff about international trade and travel, because if you're just finding this stuff washing up on shore, you're like, where in the actual hell did this come from? But then you realize, oh, well, there was a ship. It came from here. All these people, the ship probably has had a long history, and they probably have lots of different things on board that have come from around the world.
00:10:08
Speaker
And that's just the way life is on there. But when you get a wreck like that as an archeologist, you're like, what is this crazy jumbled up assemblage of stuff from around the world? And probably from vastly different time periods. This wreck is super interesting because this was a ship that was bringing goods for trading. So it wasn't a passenger ship. It was a pile of the same thing, basically. Like piles and piles of the same thing in the ship for trading and for selling. And what they did to kind of figure out
00:10:38
Speaker
what this wreck was with what time period related to was they studied the thousands of fragments of pottery that had washed up on shore over the years those blue and white pieces of Chinese ceramic and they actually dated them to the Kangxi period of China from and that is a very short time period really from 1661 to 1722.
00:10:59
Speaker
Yeah, and that's K-A-N-G-X-I. Yeah. Probably like Kang Xi. I don't know. Kang Xi or Kang Xi, yeah. I know that X-I is like Xi sometimes, but I don't know if there's a G in front of it. Yeah, I'm not sure if that changes it. But if you want to look it up, K-A-N-G-X-I.
Discovery and Identification of the Shipwreck
00:11:13
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Okay, so...
00:11:15
Speaker
Why did they go hunting for this ship now? Well, obviously we've had all these pieces washing up on shore over the years, so they knew there was something there. There's a local guy who was like, hey, there's some, you know, timbers in this cave and I know they're there and I can show you where they are. So that happened. And then they also have reports of an upper, a section of upper deck of a ship.
00:11:34
Speaker
that was visible in the mouth of a nearby river until the 1920s. And then it sort of broke up and washed away. So while that is gone, it's still more evidence that there was a large ship that had wrecked in this area. And another interesting thing about the Oregon coast, just in general, like they knew there were wrecks here because this is the rocky Oregon coast. And there's tons of stories about shipwrecks all up and down the coast. It's something that's attracted treasure hunters for years.
00:12:00
Speaker
There's always stories about them being full of riches and everything. So they're kind of weeding through a lot of stories about Rex and treasure hunting and blah, blah, blah, because there's the real stuff. And then there's the lore and the stories too. And this is why there's white houses up and down the urban coast now too. Well, yeah, there had to be, cause you can't see anything in the dark. And when you're sailing, sometimes you have to be moving in the dark. It just is what it is. So yeah.
00:12:24
Speaker
alerting people to bad areas and just letting you traverse basically. So I never did figure out like how you're supposed, I mean, Lighthouse has helped you navigate obviously and stay on course. And if they're set up correctly, you should be able to, as you're losing sight of one, pick up the next one. That's kind of the whole point and know where you're at. But I don't know how you judge like distance between the Lighthouses. If you can somehow triangulate that from the coast, if you know how far off the shoreline they are,
00:12:53
Speaker
You're like, well, I can see these two at this angle. Therefore I must be this far out. You know, if they knew that kind of math back then, I knew they were doing pretty complicated navigational math. The real navigators on these ships were, but I'm just not sure what they were doing with that. So, well, I think they knew how far out you could see the light, right? Yeah. And then they must have been able to do some triangulation stuff to help them figure out where they are based on which lights they can see probably.
00:13:20
Speaker
If they had data on the elevation of the lighthouse and if they weren't the flat earth, they wouldn't know the curvature of the earth and how far out you could possibly see it. But I don't know. But once you can see it, you really don't know how far away you are. But I think I've heard this story before, actually. Who do you think so? Wait, tell me. I think I was 12.
00:13:43
Speaker
And there was treasure for sure. Was there a monster maybe? He wasn't a monster. He was just misunderstood man. What are we talking about? We're talking about the Goonies. The Goonies. So there's your pop culture reference for the day. Although as per us, as per usual, it is a reference from the 80s because that's who we are.
00:14:04
Speaker
So interestingly, Steven Spielberg may have been inspired by these stories of all these shipwrecks and the treasure hunting on the Oregon coast and made the goonies because of inspiration from those stories. Yeah, of course, he's more from, I mean, he's done a lot of, I'm thinking of Stephen King up in Maine, but. Yeah, you are. Because there's a lot of shipwrecks up there as well. Yeah, but not Stephen King, Steven Spielberg. Steven Spielberg. One of the Stevens. Different Steven. Different Steven, yeah.
00:14:30
Speaker
Anyway, yeah, it's really cool. And this group of researchers that has been out there, they have been looking for this. I think I read in the article originally, like 12 years or something like that. Oh, yeah, a long time. Yeah. Yeah. They're the ones who did the analysis on the pottery that we were talking about. They just collected what they could find from over the years and were able to date them to that time period. This is the Marine Archaeology Society, MAS. Mm hmm.
00:14:53
Speaker
They saw the Spanish markings on the beeswax, and so they determined it was obviously a Spanish galleon, like whales. Would there be Spanish markings on those those chunks of beeswax? And they were able to narrow it down to only two possible ships that went missing during this period. That would be the Santo Cristo de Burgos, which was lost in 1693, or the San Francisco Xavier, which disappeared in 1705.
00:15:15
Speaker
And they were a little bit more inclined to say it was a Xavier at first because there is a huge earthquake and tsunami in 1700 and they figured that would
Recovery Efforts and Local Folklore
00:15:24
Speaker
have destroyed any previous shipwrecks from previous to that time. So the Burgos was from before that. So they were like, well, it must have been the Xavier then. However, interestingly, they did a geological study and it showed that the artifacts that they're finding in situ, the ones that are still in place,
00:15:41
Speaker
were actually under and within the sediment layer left by the tsunami. So because of that, the shipwreck must predate it. And because of that, it must be the Santo Cristo. And once again, we find out that archaeology is not just a singular study of something. You need to use other, I guess, other sciences, other industries, other disciplines in order to really understand the full story. Yeah, because what they're saying here is they
00:16:09
Speaker
They're calling this shipwreck the Santo Cristo, but it's like, it's not a smoking gun, right? Like they don't have a piece from the actual ship. They don't have anything that says that this is definitely the ship. They're just assuming based on all these other sort of circumstantial factors and evidence that they have. But I think it's really cool and it's definitely using science and archaeology to make that determination. So I buy it. Nice. Nice.
00:16:34
Speaker
Yeah, the tide swings out here are pretty big too. And when they were actually finding this stuff, they brought in a bunch of people. Yeah. And including Oregon Parks and Recreation, local sheriff's department search and rescue because they have all these water rescue training. Yeah. You know, so they could go in there and do that. And one of the pictures in the article shows them like hauling one of these timbers out with like life jackets around it. Yeah, totally. That was really cool. It's like, it was like they're rescuing pieces of wood, pieces of really old wood. It's kind of cool.
00:17:02
Speaker
I know. And the company that coordinated all this is actually a CRM firm called Search, and that's an acronym that I cannot remember the name for. I don't remember either. They were originally based out of Florida, I want to say, but they do work nationwide and they do underwater archaeology all over the place. Yeah, they really specialize in maritime archaeology for sure. So they basically coordinated all this because it was a lot to get all of these people together and the people that aren't archaeologists and scientists to work with the ones that are so that they know what they're doing and what they're picking up.
Viking Shipyard Discovery in Sweden
00:17:29
Speaker
They only had 90 minutes because of these crazy tide swings to safely get in and out and get the wood pieces they were trying to uncover. So really interesting. That's probably 90 minutes every like 12 hours too.
00:17:44
Speaker
Well, not even because they had to wait for a super low tide because not every tide is created equal. They were waiting for the lowest tide possible. And maybe they had a couple days of that because it's sort of cyclical, you know, but they had to really schedule this and coordinate it. Right. It was a very well coordinated maneuver for sure.
00:18:03
Speaker
Right. All right. Well, they're going to keep looking for the rest of the ship because they obviously haven't found all of it. Yeah. They want that smoking gun to know for sure. Yeah. Yeah. They need something probably that, you know, there's always often like a ship's bell or something like that. That's labeled with the name of the ship. They said even coins. Yeah. Coins can be really indicative of where it came from and what ship it is. So yeah, anything like that would be amazing. They think that there could be a coin in somebody's like personal collection that they found on the beach.
00:18:28
Speaker
somewhere, they just need to turn it in, but who wants to turn in a coin they found on the beach, you know? Yeah. So it's really hard to find a ship that has crashed off the shore. It's much easier to find a ship that's actually just like in a shipyard. You don't say. Yeah. Let's go off to the easy one over in Sweden, and we'll talk about that on the other side, back in a minute.
00:18:49
Speaker
Welcome back to episode 177 of the archaeology shipwreck. I mean, sorry, the archaeology show. So yes, this is a whole ship shipwreck theme. Yeah. This next one's not like a shipwreck. Right. But there are some ships wrecked in it. Yes. Yes. A shipyard, an ancient shipyard. So that kind of basically counts. There were ships there at one point.
00:19:11
Speaker
Yeah. So the article is called, uh, first of its kind, Viking age shipyard discovered in burka, a Swedish world heritage site. So first of its kind in this area, obviously shipyard and so like that have probably been found before in other places, but not necessarily Viking era. Cause
00:19:29
Speaker
Well, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. Viking era shipyard. That might be a new thing. Anyway, Birka is known as Sweden's first town, which is really cool. Like their first real, I guess, real city like thing. They called it a city a couple of times within this.
00:19:45
Speaker
within this article. It was established in the mid-8th century, which was a really long time ago, and it was originally set up as a trading post for Vikings, basically, because they were traveling all over the place, picking different things up. I say that as though they were just out there touring around, but we all know they were raping and pillaging if you've ever seen the Vikings show.
00:20:06
Speaker
No, so the reality is they weren't always doing that no, but I'm sure that did happen I mean they were they were actually pretty forceful about what they did But there was a lot of trade and other things going on as well Vikings are just you know horn-wearing, you know crazy people. Yeah, in fact most of that is Right, but I think we did a Viking episode a while back. Yeah, we should probably put that in our notes and link to it
00:20:27
Speaker
Yeah, we can do that. Anyway, the trading post was set up by Vikings for long distance maritime trade, as I mentioned, because they had to bring their stuff back and be able to like, you know, put it somewhere and do stuff with it, right? Yeah. The city is currently on an island called Bjorko, because Sweden, you know, the tip of Sweden there is all just like crazy islands and stuff, because it's been ripped apart from the mainland. Yeah, yeah, totally.
00:20:53
Speaker
It was named a UNESCO world heritage site in 1993. Now the city, burka itself has a massive rampart surrounding it. And I'm actually not sure if that rampart is still there. I think it's more of a historical, you know, it was there like this huge, just basically wall, you know, part of the world heritage site, I would say, like it's from one of the past incarnations of the city.
00:21:16
Speaker
Right. And that served as obviously a defense mechanism, as a legal boundary in some cases, as a social boundary in some cases, and other boundaries. It was just like, hey, stuff happens inside. What happens inside the wall stays inside the wall, basically.
00:21:32
Speaker
So yeah up until Relatively recently excavation efforts were forecast were focused inside the rampart However, they decided to you know, take a closer
Understanding the Viking Shipyard
00:21:44
Speaker
look outside. Obviously they had done some work They'd done some mapping and drone work in order to survey the area which they kind of suspected was a shipyard Okay hadn't really done any excavation on yeah, and they ended up finding
00:21:58
Speaker
A number of things, some of the notable discoveries were a stone-lined depression with a wooden, they said a wooden boat slop at the bottom, and I don't know what a slop is. SLOP. And that could have been a typo in the article, I'm not really sure, but it said a wooden boat slop at the bottom.
00:22:16
Speaker
that said this is where boats would have been serviced. So I don't know if it was like the remains of a boat that was being serviced and just like abandoned, or if it's some thing that you use to maybe hold a boat in place perhaps or something like that while the boat is being serviced. I'm actually not totally sure. Yeah. I'm guessing it's the second one because as we've seen in real life, you know, you have to have the boat standing up. You can't let it just tip over. It's bad for the boat. And also you need it to be upright in order to work on it properly.
00:22:42
Speaker
So I'm guessing it's some way that they would hold it up in order to work on it. Yeah, you know the real smoking gun that they found here too, which you would expect to find at a shipyard were massive quantities of used and unused boat rivets. Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, so
00:23:00
Speaker
I'd like to know what a boat rivet looked like back in the eighth and ninth centuries. I'm willing to bet they were just pieces of wood. From what I understand... Oh, they're wood, not metal? I was thinking they would be metal. They don't have to be metal. And they likely weren't metal early on. Because metal
00:23:18
Speaker
And especially iron, you know, would, would be sure great and strong, but it would rust like crazy in saltwater. So you'd have to replace these things relatively frequently. It would have to be an alloy of some sort that was a little more resistant to rust. Yeah. Like iron would be pretty good, right? Well, like I said, iron rusts, but it has to be an alloy of something that doesn't have a lot of iron in it. Right. So it still has that strength, but more rust. Yeah. I just am wondering because if there would, you would think they would have decomposed away.
00:23:48
Speaker
Well, all a rivet does is hold two things together. If you take a piece of wood that has been maybe softened by water, like if you soak it or something like that, but you don't soak it to the point where it's just going to fall apart, this is really hard wood. And you can pound this in between two planks.
00:24:06
Speaker
And then once it dries. Like IKEA furniture? Like IKEA furniture. Much like a dowel, actually. Yeah. Except a dowel's not really a rivet. Yeah, yeah. Because a rivet's going to be more permanent. Right. And then if you pound the ends to where they're kind of flat, so you kind of squish them out, and then let that whole thing dry, and then probably, I think they used to put some kind of tar or pitch on it or something like that that would help seal it up, then that becomes the holding portion. That becomes the rivet that holds this whole thing together.
00:24:33
Speaker
Again, they didn't really elaborate on what the rivets looked like, but my guess is there were probably some wooden rivets because they could have lasted in that environment, depending on what they were digging in. They did find other wooden fragments and things. They found whetstones made from slate, which of course are used for sharpening metal tools, and also woodworking tools, which again, you would expect all of this. So they did have metal, and it's entirely possible that
00:24:58
Speaker
these were metal rivets, right? So, I mean, obviously they had metal in the eighth century. I just wasn't sure about it in Sweden, like what their technological advancements were. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I just don't know enough about how they built ships or how those people built their ships, because it would be surprising if it wasn't metal, but I guess it could be either one. Sure. Just need more information.
00:25:20
Speaker
Yeah, a site like this has never been found in this area, so they're pretty excited about it. And the cool thing is a lot of times when we find archaeology sites, we're like, I mean, it could be this, it could be that, especially when we're working in, you know, like Nevada and California. Oh, yeah. Oh, look at this. It could be, we were just like, it's a hunting camp because we found a projectile point. Right.
00:25:40
Speaker
But it could just could have been just like a daycare where you're having kids, you know, yeah, play with play with tools. But anyway, they clearly know this is a shipyard like there's not really much else that it could be, which is really sweet. Overall, they found other things, including the remains of jetties and and jetties for you non maritime folks are essentially usually rock, but could be other debris. But it's it's something that helps surround a harbor or at least block the
00:26:07
Speaker
prevailing direction of the, not necessarily winds, but the waves, which essentially are created largely by the winds and the tides. So if you block those with a jetty, you end up with a calmer area inside where you can work. And that's how harbors are created, or at least unnatural harbors. Natural harbors already have this kind of arc of land on either side with an entrance, right? Usually that's created by some prominent river that comes in there over tens of thousands of years that created this natural harbor.
00:26:36
Speaker
They found boat launches and then, of course, other shipyard items, but pretty neat. Yeah, that's really cool. So then my question is, and I'm sure this is the question of the archaeologists and the people working on the site, is who used this shipyard? Could anybody use it? Right. Why was it outside the town rampart? Or was it outside because it's a shipyard and it's huge? So it just had to be. There seems like there's a lot more work that needs to go on into answering these kind of questions.
00:27:05
Speaker
Yeah, there certainly is, because with this being a large port, I'm sure other explorers would have come by and said, oh, can I dock here? And were they immediately assaulted and those fire arrows shot at their ship, or were they allowed to land and trade? And get their ship work done.
French Shipwreck Discovery and Preservation
00:27:22
Speaker
Yeah, totally. Well, it is a business, right? Shipyards are still businesses, so I'm sure anybody with money can get their ship worked on. Well, back then, I wonder if it was a business. It could have been state run. It could have been owned by the rulers. Whoever's running the area. Yeah, totally. And charging a tax to get stuff worked on. I can totally see that.
00:27:43
Speaker
Well, somebody that could have used a shipyard is a 1,300 year old ship, which puts it, I mean, back right before when this city was made. So they were just too early to get their boat worked on, but they were in southern France and wrecked their boat. And we're going to talk about that on the other side of the break. Back in a minute.
00:28:01
Speaker
Welcome back to the third and final shipwreck segment of episode 177. And this one is actually a shipwreck. This one is, yeah. So the article is called Archaeologists Race Against Time to Study Crumbling 1300 Year Old Shipwreck. And it is a 40 foot long boat and it radiocarbon dates
00:28:20
Speaker
to 680 to 720 CE. It is located in a silty stream bed and it's preserved it really well. Silt and that like wet silt is a really, really great preserver. So that's nice. However, it is extremely fragile and even just a little exposure to air starts breaking down the wood.
00:28:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's really cool. The first picture you see, if you click on the link in the article, is basically the remains of the boat. And it looks like they've put down the metal, I would assume, walls around it in the stream bed and basically drained all the water away from it and put a stairwell down there. And there's a guy just soaking it with water. And they're probably doing this relatively constantly.
00:29:06
Speaker
They are. It's every 30 minutes. They have to spray it down with water because, and especially because there's a heat wave going on right now too. They just have to keep it wet or else it's going to start like falling apart. The wood start splintering and breaking up. The guys literally spraying it with a hose. If they're doing it every 30 minutes, they must have like an automated.
00:29:24
Speaker
Sprinkler system or something set up right they must cuz it's like they could do it overnight But maybe they don't have to do it as often overnight when it's dark, and they don't have the heat of the Sun It's still dries out. I don't know it sounds you know what it sounds a lot like hmm when we were in Miami and we had to take shifts and get up in the middle of the night to go over and fill the Generator with gas so that it would keep pumping water out of the well site that we were because our exhibition was Under the water line yeah
00:29:51
Speaker
And it was a natural limestone filter, basically, for the inter-coastal waterway. And we just bring water in. Nice, clean, filtered water, basically. But yeah, we had to have a generator running pretty much 24 hours a day. And it was crazy. And then you always get that one drunk bastard that slept in or missed his shift. And we all get to work in the morning. And it's just like totally flooded. 12 feet of water in there.
00:30:14
Speaker
Or the generator failed, I think, at one point, or the pump did. Yeah, but the person on shift is supposed to notice that and then go at 2 a.m. and see that that happened. Yeah, it was like in between shifts or something, anyway. It was always a nice morning of just sitting at the bagel shop when that happened, because it would take a couple hours for it to pump out water. Yeah, totally.
00:30:34
Speaker
I have a feeling people went over there and like turn the generator off just to have an easy morning. I'm not saying I wouldn't have done that. Yeah. I mean, it was a little ridiculous to expect people to wake up at midnight and then 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. to go put gas in a generator. The things that CRM archaeologists do kind of insane.
00:30:53
Speaker
I'm willing to bet there's very similar problems in this area here because with that silty soil, you can see it sitting on silty sand and it has got to be staying wet. I mean, it is below the stream. Yeah. Yeah. They moved the stream out of the way in order to excavate this and they are fully excavating it. They are dismantling it piece by piece.
00:31:15
Speaker
And they probably want to put this back together, I would assume, after preservation. That's up in the air. We'll talk about that in a minute. But it's up in the air what they're going to do with it. So they have to remove each piece, clean it, and then re submerge it in water in order to keep it from splintering, splitting, and basically falling apart. So that's the process there. It's kind of less archaeology and more just like recovery almost. And I was thinking before reading this that
00:31:44
Speaker
I had heard before that one of the ways to preserve wood, at least small pieces of wood, was to inject it with a substance, and that's kind of exactly what they're doing. And I didn't know you could do it on this scale, though. But they're injecting it with a resin, basically, that essentially... Would preserve it. Kind of like preserves it in place. It coats all the things, but then dries clear. So it just looks like a piece of wood. Probably an incredibly heavy piece of wood. Yeah, but how do you do that when it's wet, and then it gets coated in resin when it's wet?
00:32:13
Speaker
I don't think you can do it when it's dry. Unless you did it in a very controlled environment. The problem is some of these pieces are really big. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. When you look at that picture, you can see it looks like the bottom of a boat just like sitting on the bed of the stream. So yeah. The way they're put together, it looks like a whole bunch of railroad ties, honestly. Yeah. Crazy.
00:32:34
Speaker
Well, the other option, if this whole resin idea doesn't work, is to just rebury it. I'm not sure where they would rebury it, probably somewhere secret so that people don't mess with it. Somewhere with wet soil. And somewhere with wet soil, yeah, yeah. Or just let it go, you know, once they get it recorded.
Debate on Shipwreck Preservation
00:32:48
Speaker
Once they have all the information, like what's the point in keeping the thing if you've pulled all the information from it? Well, the one cool thing if they were able to is, and I don't know what the answer to this question is, but well, first off, is it even
00:33:01
Speaker
you know from that area of southern france or did you just wreck there right did they even know that yet they haven't said yeah so whose technology is this an example of and do we have one do we have a good one from this era of a ship like that my guess is probably not we probably don't have a ton of them but you know if they are able to preserve it you know setting this thing up so it looks like a good ship would be a really good example of just things from this area and that would be really cool to have because that's the one of the whole points of archaeology is to
00:33:29
Speaker
you know, find these examples of things through time and then show people and learn from them so they can see and study them. So, but if we've got a thousand of these, then yeah, rebury it. Yeah, totally. So I was just checking the article and it says that the boat dates to the time of the Franks, which are a tribal people who sort of came into the area after the fall of the Roman empire. And they kind of dominated sort of Western Europe in that timeframe. And specifically the ruling group were called the Merovingians.
00:33:59
Speaker
So they're kind of attributing the wreck to that, those people in that timeframe because just because of the carbon dating that puts it in that timeframe. I don't think they have any other identifying characteristics that say it is. It was the Frank's that came through, huh? I thought it was the Gary's, but I could have been, that was a different era. I think the jokes are bad today. Actually sure. They're bad today. Yes.
00:34:22
Speaker
Yeah, so anyway, I don't I don't know if it's worth preserving going through all that effort to preserve it or if they I mean it they say that they don't have any other boat like this across Europe, so But my question is is that why preserve it? Mm-hmm after you map it after you get all the photos and the images and you've done the testing What more do you can you possibly learn from a resin coated boat?
00:34:46
Speaker
Now, if you're putting it on display for people to see, that's one thing that's really cool. It's public outreach. It's it's taking something really neat and putting it in front of people who don't know about that kind of thing. Great. But from just a preserve to have it kind of standpoint, I'm like, why do that? Yeah, again, if they don't have a lot of examples of it, that's true. It would be it would be really cool a museum for people to learn from. So yeah, I like that would be the only reason. Well, and you never know what future technologies will bring to, you know, you're always saying that. So I guess there's there's that to consider.
00:35:16
Speaker
That's true. And they've dated it, but I wonder what else they could tell from really studying the timbers, you know, cross-sectioning them and looking at them and see if there's anything else they could figure out. Because there's actually, at least in the pictures, there's a lot left. Yeah. Probably some of the upper structure is gone and things like that, but there's a lot left. And you can tell a lot just by looking at the timbers and how they were created and the rivets that are inevitably there that held it all together. Totally. You know, the technology involved.
00:35:45
Speaker
And it's big too. It's pretty big. It probably could have handled a large cargo. So now I wonder if like embedded in the wood, they could find particles of whatever kind of cargo it carried, which would be really interesting to test and find out what was in it. Now it was in a river, in a stream bed. So all of that could have been carried away over the years too. It would have to be like deeply embedded in the wood, but that could be a kind of a neat study. Okay. All right, fine. I'm on the preservation side of things.
00:36:13
Speaker
It's just Reza will ruin it. Sure, it preserves it, but it also ruins it. Yeah, but it's already ruined, so it can't get any worse. I mean, it can, and we're just trying to arrest the worsening. The worsening. Babe ruins it for future testing, I guess, is what I'm saying.
00:36:30
Speaker
It will do that, yeah. But I would be willing to bet they'd maybe keep a couple beams aside, keep them in water or something. Keep them preserved, for sure. They estimated the original size of this boat to be around 40 feet, which is really cool. Yeah. Because the shapes of boats is pretty easy to determine. They have to be a certain shape to work, just from a buoyancy standpoint. And people figured that out back in the day. So it looks to me like they have half to maybe two thirds of it, just estimating the size based on what they say here.
00:37:00
Speaker
So the one last question that they're trying to answer here is why? Why is it here? It's kind of a marshy area, I guess. It's not a great spot for a boat. So why? And what happened to it? Was it the same type of area environmentally 1,300 years ago?
00:37:19
Speaker
Well, they're saying it's like a side stream of the Garonne and it's a marshy area. And while it's been used since antiquity and throughout the medieval area, the article says it's also kind of not a great area. So I don't know. It's just hard. Yeah.
00:37:36
Speaker
1,300 years ago was still on the backslide of the last Ice Age. And I know in North America, at least in the United States area, you were still dealing with some larger lakes that now currently don't exist. And those lakes were created from glacial outwash and just glacial melting.
00:37:58
Speaker
And I mean, glaciers covered Europe too. And I'm just wondering if maybe there were higher levels of everything and what the air environment looked like back in that time. Yeah. So what looks like just a little stream today might've been much more significant back then. It's definitely possible. Yeah. I feel like they would know that though.
00:38:18
Speaker
Because don't we have a pretty good record of that kind of thing? Well, we do in some areas, but maybe they don't in that area. Yeah, who knows? And this is also just like an NBC News article. True story. Not the paper. There's one likely they've already got this data and they just didn't report on it. Yeah, that's definitely possible. Yeah.
00:38:37
Speaker
Yeah. Well, we should actually getting to that point. This is pretty early. Like we're seeing pictures of the excavation and I believe they are still excavating. They haven't even decided what they're doing for preservation. So I would expect that at some point down the line, we'd get a, an actual paper about it, which would answer some of these questions. So this is definitely preliminary. All right. Well, I think that's about it for the shipwreck episode.
00:39:00
Speaker
What a shipwreck. What a shipwreck. All right, shipwreck. I guess we'll see you next week. Our next recording will still be from Long Beach. But then, you know, after that, it's going to get more interesting. We're going to go back up into what we're going to stay in Washington for a week after that. And then we're up into Canada for a month. Yeah, we're going to do a little Canada touring. So, yeah.
00:39:21
Speaker
So we'll see what we can do up there. I don't know if there's anything we can record about that we can actually get onto the show, but that would be pretty cool if we could. Well, it's the archaeology show, not the history show, which makes it hard when we go to places. But archaeology is history, which makes me like, ah. It is. It is. It's true. But maybe we could find some Canadian themed stories or
Podcast Closing and Future Episodes
00:39:38
Speaker
something. Maybe we can. That would be fun, for sure. That would be really cool. Yep. All right. Well, with that, we're going to take this shipwreck out. Bye.
00:39:53
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Archaeology Show. Feel free to comment and view the show notes on the website at www.arcpodnet.com. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at arcpodnet. Music for this show is called, I Wish You Would Look, from the band C Hero. Again, thanks for listening, and have an awesome day.
00:40:17
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, Dig Tech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster and Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.