Assessing the Damage and Remaining Archeological Potential of Commercially Salvaged Sites Mozambique Island: the case of São Sebastião fortress wrecks.
Author(s): Cézar Sebastião Mahumane
Year: 2017
Summary
Following discovery of sea route around the Cape by Vasco da Gama in 1498 that opened the maritime trade between Europe and India, Mozambique Island-which served as capital of Portuguese East Africa from 1507 to 1898-came to play an important role in mediating the maritime interactions that subsequently emerged. The Island’s underwater archaeological heritage that results from this history has been heavily impacted over the last decade by commercial salvage activity as assessed in 2015 by the Archaeology Department of Eduardo Mondlane University with international partners. The paper focuses the most disturbed of these underwater sites near São Sebastião Fortress, delineating the extent of this disturbance and the potential limitations imposed on archaeological interpretations. However it also begins to explore the possibilities for still gathering archaeologically significant information from these sites. It thus explores an archaeological problematic that is of unfortunately increasing relevance to underwater archeology across the developing world.
Cite this Record
Assessing the Damage and Remaining Archeological Potential of Commercially Salvaged Sites Mozambique Island: the case of São Sebastião fortress wrecks.. Cézar Sebastião Mahumane. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Fort Worth, TX. 2017 ( tDAR id: 435505)
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Keywords
Geographic Keywords
Mozambique
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Sub-Saharan Africa
Spatial Coverage
min long: 30.213; min lat: -26.847 ; max long: 40.846; max lat: -10.478 ;
Individual & Institutional Roles
Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology
Record Identifiers
PaperId(s): 611