Portuguese East Indiamen Shipwrecks Of 1503. Al-Hallaniya Island, Oman. The Land Archaeology Survey And Excavations

Summary

In the spring of 2013 and 2014 I participated in the "Portuguese East Indiamen Shipwrecks of 1503" project conducted by Oman’s Ministry of Heritage and Culture and Blue Water Recoveries Ltd. (Midhurst, UK). The focus was upon identifying the shipwrecks associated with the 1503 Portuguese East India expedition. The work described here was an archaeological survey and excavation on Al-Hallaniyah Island in areas where potential Portuguese burials might have occurred. Initial results identified 60+ stone cairns with measurements suggestive of human burials. Excavation of more than ten cairns, however, did not yield any human remains. Despite this negative result, ancillary data strongly suggests that cairns are the burials of Portuguese sailors.  These data include information on burial construction and orientation, forensic patterns of body decomposition and biochemical and biomedical analyses. My hypothesis is that these cairns indeed are associated with the interment of Portuguese sailors.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018   •
• The Maritime Archaeology of Al Hallaniyah, Khuriya Muriya Islands, Oman

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 866