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The Study of Iberian Seafaring
- Proposed Methodology
The study of Iberian ships has started more than one century
ago, when a number of Spanish scholars tried to replicate the ships of Columbus, and a number of Portuguese scholars
followed in their wake, trying to understand how were the ships of the Portuguese discoveries conceived and built.
This endeavor revealed itself next to impossible when only historical documents were consulted.
After the Second World War the development of sport diving
created conditions to extend the methodology of land archaeology into the sea, and adding a source of knowledge
to those interested in the reconstruction of this particular slice of our common past.
In the last decades of the 20th century the development of
computer science has made available a new set of tools that allow the input of engineers, computer scientists,
and 3D animators, creating three new experimental archaeology sub-fields of study.
These new tools have established the conditions for a rapid
and exciting expansion of nautical archaeology, providing that scholars from all these different fields learn how
to communicate and work together.
Moreover, the development of robotics will probably make available
deep sea shipwrecks that so have been only accessible to looters and treasure hunters, whose devastating actions
are well-known to most scholars.
The slide show presented below is an attempt to propose a
methodology for the study of the ships built in the Iberian Peninsula in the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods.
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