“When you set sail for Ithaca, wish for the road to be long, full of adventures, full of knowledge.”
– From Ithaca, by Constantine P. Cavafy
We are semi-aquatic archaeologists; half our time we spend digging on land and half our time we dig underwater. Join us in our adventures around the globe and beneath the waves: from the coral reefs of Bermuda to ferocious coast of Spain to the ruins of ancient Egyptian cities. We post about the projects we have been part of, the history behind them and the amazing people we’ve had a chance to meet.
Doug running the gradiometer in Vietnam. - 2011 © Veronica Morriss
Doug Inglis | CV | Portfolio
Shipwrecks tell amazing stories, and I am captivated by the romance of seafaring, exploration and survival. I am a nautical archaeologist, and study the ships and maritime culture of Southeast Asia.
Prior to diving into underwater archaeology, I specialized in high-altitude archaeology – working in Rocky Mountain National Park and alpine regions of Colorado and Wyoming.
Currently, I am assistant director of the Warwick Shipwreck Excavation in Bermuda, and work as an archaeological illustrator at Texas A&M’s new world lab (see here). You can find my CV here. I blog while taking a break from my master’s thesis in Nautical Archaeology.
Veronica Morriss | CV
Veronica Morriss
After growing up on the island of Hawaii a passion for adventure brought me to Egypt. I fell in love with the people and the archaeology of the Middle East and moved to Cairo at the first opportunity. Between studying Egyptology at the American University in Cairo and teaching English literature at a local school, I travelled the region. Among my most memorable adventures were exploring the Phoenician port of Byblos, hiking the ruins of Petra, wandering through the expanses of Jerash, and visiting the holy sites of Palestine. When I wasn’t doing archaeology I was diving in the Red Sea or trekking through the Sahara desert.
In the summers of 2009-2010 I directed the search for a Hellenistic harbor in the Egyptian Nile Delta; the basis of my recently completed MA thesis in nautical archaeology at Texas A&M University. I have worked around the Mediterranean, diving beneath the murky waters of Alexandria, surveying Crete’s Kassian Strait for ancient trade routes, and excavating a 7th century BC Phoenician shipwreck off the coast of Spain.
You can find my CV here. For more on my adventures see my blog!
This blog has been a very interesting read and I was surprised and excited to find out that you both study at Texas A&M!!! Go Aggies!
What kind of schooling would be necessary for this career?
If you are looking to participate, there are a number of active avocational groups that have an enormous wealth of skill and knowledgeable practitioners. If you are looking to do the work professionally, you generally need a graduate degree in history or anthropology (archaeology). There are a number of underwater/maritime/nautical archaeology programs. The big hitters are Texas A&M, East Carolina University and The University of Southampton. However there are a number of smaller English language programs out there – Flinders, UCONN, etc.