Are You Always This Disarticulate? The Fundamental Disconnect of Interpreting the Fragments of the Route 35 Shipwreck

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

During the construction of a sheet-pile seawall along Route-35 on the New Jersey shore, contractors discovered the remains of a shipwreck by disabling a 20-ton piledriver upon it. After removing much of the material in what could be charitably called an uncontrolled excavation, agencies mobilized maritime archaeologists to conduct a damage assessment and chart a way forward. That launched a feverish two-year odyssey that saw the recovery, recordation, and stabilization of nearly 100 artifacts (only three of which were articulated) while testing, to complete the urgently needed seawall prior to the next big storm. Agencies joined a chorus of historical societies, and media outlets calling to put a name to the wreckage, while the team pored over databases, museum collections, and national archives. When faced with thousands of potential names along a coastline festooned with the wreckage of maritime history, can 95 disarticulated fragments point the way to positive identification?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow