Deep-water Exploration into World War II Underwater Cultural Heritage from the Battle of Saipan

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Exploration-Forward Archaeology Through Community-Driven Research", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

While shallow-water World War II underwater cultural heritage (UCH) related to the Battle of Saipan has been researched extensively, there is little known about deep-water UCH from the battle. During Ships of Discovery’s 2023 NOAA Saipan project, numerous methods were used for the location and identification of deep-water WWII UCH in order to expand context and understanding of the battlefield in deeper waters. Methods include machine learning analysis of topobathy LIDAR in ESRI ArcGIS Pro to identify potential offshore targets and ground-truthing targets by diver and ROV testing and tow board surveys. As a result, the team identified battle-related remains and documented a U.S. PBM Coronado seaplane and a multivehicle WWII LVT dump site. This paper discusses the challenges and outcomes of deep-water exploration into WWII UCH from the Battle of Saipan.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Exploration-Forward Archaeology Through Community-Driven Research

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow