Submerged Cultural Resources and the Maritime Heritage of the Great Lakes

Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2019

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Submerged Cultural Resources and the Maritime Heritage of the Great Lakes," at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The Great Lakes have created a maritime heritage unique to the region, evidence of which can be found preserved in the waters of these Inland Seas. Estimates suggest there are anywhere between 1,400 and 8,000 shipwrecks in Lake Erie alone. In 2018, survey work sponsored by the Ohio History Connection focused explicitly on eastern Ohio, specifically the waters off of Ashtabula County. Located just west of the border between Ohio and Pennsylvania, the harbors at Conneaut and Ashtabula were important industrial and commercial ports in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first papers in this session will review Ohio's submerged cultural resource potential, present results from the 2018 survey work, and discuss the contributions of MAST and PASST, avocational dive groups in Lake Erie. Additional research will also be presented on Wisconsin shipwrecks and the associated iron mining industry, and a Native American maritime cultural landscape.

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-7 of 7)

  • Documents (7)

Documents
  • Breaking the Surface: 2018 Recovery of the Wooden Schooner Barge Adriatic (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Loren R Clark. Matthew J Maus. Stephen James.

    This is an abstract from the "Submerged Cultural Resources and the Maritime Heritage of the Great Lakes" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Proposed improvements to Berth 1 at the Fincantieri Bay Shipbuilding Yard in Sturgeon Bay will require removal of the remains of the self-unloading, wooden schooner barge Adriatic. What would become an iconic vessel type on the Great Lakes, the Adriatic, built in 1889, was converted into one of the earliest...

  • Days of Ore: Underwater Archaeological Investigations of Freedom Iron Mine, Captain C.T. Roberts' Wet Prospect (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Zant. Paul Reckner. Tamara Thomson.

    This is an abstract from the "Submerged Cultural Resources and the Maritime Heritage of the Great Lakes" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In the early decades of the twentieth century, there was a brief boom in industrial-scale iron mining in the Baraboo Range Iron District in central Wisconsin. Freedom Mine, located in LaRue, Wisconsin, is one of the few examples of these iron ore mines left in the region, and its underground workings remain...

  • Identifying Submerged Sites in Ohio’s Far Northeast Corner, or, Where’s Ashtabula? (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kendra A. Kennedy. Linda L. Pansing.

    This is an abstract from the "Submerged Cultural Resources and the Maritime Heritage of the Great Lakes" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Ohio’s maritime heritage is fairly underrepresented in documentation at the Ohio State Historic Preservation Office, with an even greater dearth of information about submerged cultural resources in northeastern Ohio. When Hurricane Sandy funds became available for Ashtabula County, the Ohio History Connection...

  • Lake Erie Shipwrecks and Submerged Landscapes: Results from the 2018 Survey (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Evans.

    This is an abstract from the "Submerged Cultural Resources and the Maritime Heritage of the Great Lakes" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. A 2018 submerged cultural resources survey conducted by Coastal Environments, Inc., under contract to the Ohio History Connection, focused on the waters off Ashtabula County.  The survey was designed to address high probability shipwreck sites and potential areas for submerged landscapes.  Geophysical survey was...

  • A Shell Above the Waters: An Ojibwa Maritime Cultural Landscape (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only T. Kurt Knoerl.

    This is an abstract from the "Submerged Cultural Resources and the Maritime Heritage of the Great Lakes" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. For the Ojibwa First Nations in the Lake Superior region water was not only a source of life, but it permeated their cosmology, their music, their daily routines, and their very identity as well. This paper reports on research conducted in 2018 that took advantage of interviews, artwork, material culture, and...

  • Two Models for Volunteer-Driven Underwater Archaeology in Lake Erie (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ben L. Ford. Carrie Sowden.

    This is an abstract from the "Submerged Cultural Resources and the Maritime Heritage of the Great Lakes" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Ohio-based Maritime Archaeological Survey Team (MAST) and the Pennsylvania Archaeology Shipwreck Survey Team (PASST) both rely heavily on amateur, volunteer archaeologists to record and disseminate information about Lake Erie shipwrecks. Both are steered by a single professional maritime archaeologist...

  • Which Way is Ashtabula? Recent Archaeological Investigations within Lake Erie Waters of Ashtabula County, Ohio (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Haley Streuding.

    This is an abstract from the "Submerged Cultural Resources and the Maritime Heritage of the Great Lakes" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 2018, Coastal Environments, Inc., (CEI) conducted a targeted cultural resources survey in the Lake Erie waters of Ashtabula County, Ohio, a study area covering ca. 30 square miles of lake bottom.  The project’s first phase consisted of a geophysical survey at selected locations within the study area.  The...