With support from a National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation Award, the Department of Anthropology, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University will acquire a boat, four-wheel drive tow vehicle, and a trailer to be used for underwater archaeological survey and excavation. The equipment will support the principal investigator's long-term research on the archaeological record of European maritime trade and African-European interactions in the Central Region of coastal Ghana, and facilitate one of the most comprehensive archaeological surveys of its kind yet undertaken in Africa. The grant will also support both graduate and undergraduate training through dissertation research projects, MA theses, and undergraduate field schools.
In terms of intellectual merit, the research in coastal Ghana examines sociocultural transformations in African societies during the second millennium AD, with particular emphasis on trade, social organization, and technological change during the era of the Atlantic World. Focusing on the archaeological record, the project takes a holistic, interdisciplinary perspective that integrates documentary sources and oral traditions with data obtained from both terrestrial and underwater sites. Study of the nature and consequences of the Atlantic trade will be aided by well-dated trade materials from some of the region's principal European trade ports and cargoes from European shipwrecks. Shipwrecks, particularly from the early period of Portuguese exploration of the African coast, will also provide important insight into early European maritime technology.
The boat and towing equipment provided will be used to conduct a magnetometer and side-scan sonar survey to identify potential submerged shipwreck sites associated with some of the regions most important trade ports. Divers will investigate the targets identified, determining which represent significant historic sites. Finally, archaeologists will then conduct more intensive studies of the most promising ship wrecks, including excavations to determine the vessel's date, nationality, and purpose of voyage (i.e. trade, transport, naval defense, etc.).
The information obtained will have broader impact on archaeological method and theory beyond coastal Ghana. Both the marine and terrestrial research will take a holistic, regional perspective. Methodologically, work in many world areas has demonstrated the importance of a regional perspective in tracing long-term change. This perspective is implicitly multi-scale in vantage, from artifacts to the site, from the site to the region. Combined with a cultural historical (chronological) framework, this provides a means to move from site-specific questions to the much broader issues of regional trade patterns, provisioning, identity and socio-political change. The project will also be an important contribution to underwater archaeology in other areas, which is still in its early stages in Africa. The project will provide the first comprehensive marine survey of the region and, indeed, it will be one of the most comprehensive regional surveys undertaken in Africa. The data from the project will provide a model for a more regional approach in future works.
