Politics, Professionalism, and the Public in Archaeology: The Endeavour Bark Project

Summary

This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (RIMAP) incorporates the public into professionally directed marine archaeology research. Its volunteers understand how archaeology differs from the popular media, understand the importance of cultural resource protection, and become a constituent group empowering that protection. RIMAP's ongoing study of the British transports scuttled in 1778 in Newport Harbor has generated great international interest because the Lord Sandwich transport had been Cook's Endeavour Bark. In 2018 RIMAP archaeologists and volunteers, in partnership with the Australian National Maritime Museum, provisionally identified one site as the iconic Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour®. Limited excavations in 2019 will test that hypothesis. Including volunteers in the professional archaeology team validates the public's right to have access to its property, and acknowledges the responsibility to be sensitive to those other publics, of first nations around the world, who share their 18th-century histories with European contact, Capt. Cook, and the Endeavour Bark.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• 2020 SHA General Sessions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 781