LAKE ONTARIO MARITIME CULTURAL LANDSCAPE PROJECT

Institute of Nautical Archaeology Sponsored Project
Ben Ford, Principal Investigator

The terrestrial survey will include archaeologists walking transects parallel to the shoreline and spaced approximately 8 meters (26 ft) apart. The archaeologists will inspect all areas where permission is granted by the property owner and record all visible archaeological features (artifact scatters, historic walls, roadways, pilings, etc.) photographically and with a sub-meter accuracy GPS receiver. The terrestrial survey will also include informant interviews to identify areas of high archaeolgical sensitivity or no longer extant sites.

The marine survey will include side-scan sonar, magnetometer, and diver transects. The area from the waterline to approximately 5-m water depth will be surveyed by archaeologically trained SCUBA divers swimming along transects. In water depths greater than 5 m, marine remote sensing equipment will be employed. This equipment will not be used in shallower water because the effectiveness of both the side-scan sonar and magnetometer are substantially reduced in water less than 5-m deep. Side-scan sonar provides a “photograph” of the submerged surface by recording reflected acoustic signals. It is excellent for recording exposed shipwrecks, pier pilings, ship launching ways, or changes in the lake floor as might occur where ballast stone was dumped or natural stone was removed. The side-scan sonar will be set at 500 kHz, with a swath of 30.5 m and a sample rate of four pings per second. Lane spacing will be 15 m and the vessel speed will be maintained between two and four

knots (3.7–7.4 km/hr). These parameters will allow for 100–200 percent coverage of the survey area and meet or exceed accepted high-resolution marine surveying protocols. Magnetometers record variations in the Earth’s magnetic field often caused by concentrations of ferrous objects. As a result, they are excellent for detecting buried historical remains, such as the hardware deposited by deteriorated shipwrecks, wharves, or inundated structures. The Precambrian bedrock of the Lake Ontaro basin is overlain by a thick layer of low-susceptibility Paleozoic sedimentary rock that creates little background interference in magnetometer readings. The transect intervals described for the side-scan sonar will allow for good magnetometer readings, permitting

both pieces of equipment to be operated simultaneously.The magnetometer will be towed at the surface three boat lengths behind the survey vessel to maximize the ratio of unit height to transect width and to minimize the influence of the survey vessel on the magnetometer readings. All potential submerged archaeological targets will be recorded digitally. Both the side-scan sonar and magnetometer readings (generally spanning multiple transects) will be stored along with the geographic positions (collected using a differential GPS linked to the survey software). The GPS coordinates will be used to return to the location and conduct a SCUBA diver inspection. The divers will record the nature, approximate date/period, integrity, and disposition of the target, in addition to collecting basic measurements and sketching the target, if it appears to be archaeological.

Synthesis and analysis of the New York data will begin during the autumn of 2007. Analysis will be conducted using GIS software and will combine previously recorded and digitized archaeological data, historic cartographic data, data layers created from historic accounts and published works, data layers created from informant interviews, data collected during the proposed survey, topographic and bathymetric data, ground cover and soils data, orthoimagery, geological data, ecological data, and environmental condition data. These data include lake-wide data, state-wide data, and survey area-specific data. All modern data is available through the New York GIS Clearinghouse, GIS Data Depot, and other internet sources. US Geological Service 1:24,000 (7.5 minute series) topographic maps and orthoimagery will be used as the base maps. All other data will be overlain, or, in the case of historic cartographic data, georeferenced (“rubber-sheeted”) to correspond to the base map.

These data will be used to reconstruct the pre-Contact and historical landscapes of the survey areas. Such landscapes will include trade and transportation routes, anchorages and landing sites, industrial and production complexes, habitation sites, resource procurement sites, shipwrecks, refuse scatters, modifications to the environment, and other manifestations of human occupation and use of the shore. This research should be particularly fruitful along the shore, given that most early transportation was by water, making the shore one of the principal locations of cultural interaction. The environmental, technological, political, and cultural drivers for settlement and utilization patterns of different groups will be statistically testable by comparing site type, date, and characteristics with historic and modern environmental data. The spatial arrangement of these sites can be analyzed in relation to the Lake Ontario shore environment in general in order to establish the significance of these patterns. The study results can also be used to create a predictive model for shore sites that could be compared with known sites and tested with future work. Similar methods were successfully employed to investigate site selection criteria for historic shipyards in Maryland. Additionally, the distribution of sites from different periods can be compared to determine if they vary significantly.

The field survey will begin July 2007.

Donations of materials, vessels, hardware, software, etc. are currently being sought. All donations will be advertised and acknowledged as appropriate.