This volume brings together researchers who explore the ways in which ships can be understood and interpreted as material culture through their wreck sites, focusing on ships as artefacts, as agents, as technology, as society, as ideology and as symbols, as well as on what they carried and the people who sailed on them. Today it is recognised that the remains of wrecked ships, through their distribution in time and space, their variety and their complexity, comprise one of the richest forms of archaeological source material. At one time their value was often squandered, with anything from cursory surveys to total excavations being undertaken for the same reason George Mallory suggested that mountains were climbed: because they were there. Shipwrecks are a key site-type for maritime archaeological research and their investigations have been prominent in the subject’s development over the last sixty years. Nautical archaeologists can benefit using a multi-tiered analysis to reveal shipbuilding trends as concerns mainmast step and bilge pump assembly. Results from this study connect not only to the ill-fated Tristán de Luna y Arellano expedition of 1559, which EP II was once part of, but also trends in technological developments, as revealed in the archaeological record, on central internal hull construction. This thesis also outlines methodology in conducting in-situ analysis on the central-internal hull of the Emanuel Point II (EP II) shipwreck. Archaeologists need to reevaluate their methodology by applying the French annales approach, which attempts to understand the multi-layer trends and fluctuations throughout history, including between the archaeological record and the historical events that encapsulate shipbuilding modifications. Previous research is often focused on frame construction and the features related to regional shipbuilding traditions that led to cross-oceanic travel. Surviving mainmast steps allow archaeologists to create datasets to understand specific timeframes for shipbuilding methodology. Many of these include evidence for the mainmast step and, occasionally, remaining vestiges of the bilge pump assemblies. Over the past 30 years numerous archaeological investigations have revealed several 16th-century shipwrecks in various states of preservation. While things cannot reproduce, ideas can, and the latter become fossilized in the former. Upon closer consideration however, one will have to appreciate the extent to which human behaviour is restricted to tradition – i.e. At first glance, positions in favour of evolutionary analogies are ridiculed by this reductio ad absurdum. Rejecting evolutionary allusions to the development of water-craft altogether, Thijs Maarleveld conceded that even those who do use such terminology “will promptly deny the suggestion that ships are liable to produce offspring”, while emphasizing instead “human decisions regarding continuity or adaptations” (Maarleveld 1995, 4). This applies particularly to evolutionary theory for conceptual lineages the appropriated use thereof within archaeology is highly contested – particularly in its nautical branch – despite its metaphorical popularity and widespread use. It has often been noted that archaeologists are adept at borrowing theory but not very good at building it.
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