Enhancing our Understanding: Mapping Navigational Hazards as areas of Maritime Archaeological Potential

The project focuses on identifying areas, described and depicted in historical sources, where ship losses are more likely due primarily to environmental navigaitonal hazards. The presence of archaeological material on the seabed is also dependent on the nature of the maritime environment and its potential for preserving materials in situ. An approach is therefore being developed to categorise seabed sediment types by their preservation qualities in order to identify areas where the two coincide.
The results are displayed as character areas where recurring types of hazardous environment coincide with a high potential for preservation, using a Geographic Information System (GIS). The project sets out to improve our understanding of the maritime cultural landscape and our ability to interpret the potential for the presence of unrecorded maritime archaeology on the seabed. The digital archive consists of the final project report, additional sediment report by David Gregory of the Museum of Denmark and a PDF volume containing all project maps.