Portsmouth Island Life-Saving Station, Innovative Technology Reconstructing The Past

Summary

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

Life-Saving Stations offered vital support and rescue operations for distressed mariners since the Life-Saving Service’s formal creation as an agency of the United States Treasury in 1878. After its construction in 1894, Portsmouth Island’s Life-Saving Station assisted mariners navigating the treacherous waters surrounding Cape Lookout and served as a focal point for the island’s inhabitants. East Carolina University’s Program in Maritime Studies Summer Field School in 2019 examined the Station as part of a NCPTT funded project. Students used innovative positioning system technology, Real Time Kinematic (RTK) GNSS, to plot the extent of the remaining structures of the station. This poster will discuss the data collected through the fieldwork, as well as provide insight into the chronological development of the station through archaeological and historical data.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• 2020 SHA Poster Submissions

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 1000