How the Evolution of Side Scan Sonar and Marine Technology Influenced the Development of Maritime Archaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The British in World War I were the first to recognize the applications of this new sound technology which would later be embraced by other militaries and would eventually find commercial applications mapping the seafloor for natural resources, which drove the technology into more compact, powerful sonar devices, but also add better definition and range. Maritime archaeologists would pick George Bass, and others as pioneers of modern maritime archaeology. During the 1960s, Doctor Harold Edgerton, and others, experimented with sonar and started looking for shipwrecks. It would be Dr. Bass who made some of the initial use of sonar to look for shipwreck sites. Sonar provided the qualitative means of obtaining the sound equivalent of an aerial photograph and improved the ability to find and identify shipwrecks. This presentation discusses the timelines of pivotal discoveries of significant shipwrecks found using side-scan sonar and how both ‘sciences’ would become significantly intertwined.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SHA 2022 General Sessions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology