The reconstruction and analysis of archaeological boats and ships

Abstract

Old ships and shipwrecks have long held an almost mythical fascination in the human mind. Ever since the Renaissance, Greek and Roman ships have been a subject for antiquarian interest, often with speculation rife due to the paucity of evidence, limited mainly to literary sources and representations on monuments, mosaics, and art works. People have always had a fascination with, and a desire to imagine, visualise or reconstruct the ships that have come from the antiquarian and archaeological records. Ship reconstruction from archaeological remains is almost as old as ship archaeology.This thesis presents the techniques and methodologies developed and used for accurate and efficient data capture, in the form of three-dimensional digital documentation, allowing innovative approaches to organising, analysing, comparing, and disseminating data pertaining to the archaeological find. Subsequent advanced digital three-dimensional modelling, combining all the documented data enables detailed accurate reassembly of the surviving elements, as well as the ability to digitally model missing elements to aid in hypothetical reconstructions. These digital reconstructions can have future uses in terms of physical reassembly replica building, and ongoing conservation/analysis of ongoing changes in reconstructed physical remains in a museum.The final phase involves the use of naval architecture software to accurately calculate factors such as centre of gravity and total weight, allowing the establishment of actual floatation conditions, as well as examining external factors such as crew, cargo, wind and wave loading in order to examine hydrostatic and stability performance, as well as potential speed and power analysis, thereby resulting in a more definitive hypothetical reconstruction of archaeological ship and boat finds.

"Those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who steers a ship without a helm or compass,and who never can be certain whither he is going" – Leonardo da Vinci

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Identifiers

ORCID for Richard Whitewright: orcid.org/0000-0002-3548-0978

ORCID for Graeme Earl: orcid.org/0000-0001-9077-4605

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