The INA underwater surveys and the SOA Project

If INA Turkey has been carrying out on field surveys since 1970 and recording their findings, why does the team of ‘Shipwrecks of Anatolia’ need to go out to the same wrecks all over again? One reason (as explained above, in SOA in the field) is that we now have the technology to record sites, through video, GPS, and 3-D mapping, in ways that were unavailable to the pioneers of underwater archaeology 20-30 years ago. Another reason is that the goals and methodology of archaeological survey have evolved considerably in the last 30 years, and we now have greater expectations regarding the sort of information that an underwater survey should produce.

When INA began surveying the Turkish coast 30 years ago, it was with the stated goal of compiling a register of wrecks for the Turkish Department of Antiquities and for possible future excavation [Gifford (1974) 23 -bibliography-]. So Cowin: "the surveys are designed to sample as many sites as possible and frequently only one dive is made at a specific location" [Cowin (1986) 1 -bibliography-]. Moreover, these pioneer INA survey teams typically headed out to the sea already exhausted from long excavation seasons, working under difficult conditions, and in a race against time: until the winter storms arrived or the money ran out. Nevertheless, they consistently achieved their stated goal, and were rewarded with the discovery of some of the most significant archaeological sites of the last century. 

More recent INA surveys have divided their time between revisiting old wrecks and searching for new ones, so that the body of information about all INA’s discoveries has been growing steadily. However, it has not been growing in a planned or systematic way ... and that is one area in which the SOA project will be a huge leap forward. 

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