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George Bass: The Captain of Underwater Archaeology
| Article
# : |
20372 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1992 |
3,123 Words |
| Author
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Vaughn M. Bryant, Jr.
Vaughn M. Bryant, Jr., is an archaeologist and head of the
anthropology department at Texas A&M University in College
Station, Texas. |
It's a warm summer day in 1984. The Institute of Nautical Archaeology's (INA) Research vessel, the Virazon, bobs at anchor near the rocky Ulu Burun promontory in southern Turkey. One hundred and sixty feet below, on the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, wet suit clad George F. Bass quickly scans the remains of a 33-century-old shipwreck. He works fast, knowing at that depth he can stay no more than 20 minutes without risking the bends--the paralyzing and often fatal condition brought on by breathing too much nitrogen at such depths. In the dim light he visualizes the outline of the 50-foot vessel. Except for a few parts buried in the sand around the wreck, most of the hull is gone, chewed up by wood-eating teredo worms. Before him are upright rows of flat, sheetlike copper and tin ingots, large seaweed-covered amphoras, and scattered fragments of pottery.
Where to place the grid frames for recording and photographing the site? Where to begin mapping and digging? Where best to place the air-filled Plexiglas dome, which serves as an emergency refuge for divers who have used up their air supply? Bass looks at his watch. "So much to do. And just five minutes left!" he thinks as he pushes off the bottom and rides a gentle current over the wreck site.
Minutes later the dive-master hammers on the steel hull of the Virazon to warn Bass and his companion, Turkish archaeologist Cemal Pulak, that their time has run out, and they begin the slow ascent. Twenty feet below the surface they stop and grab the rim of the steel bucket dangling from a nearby buoy. They must wait 30 minutes at that depth until the nitrogen gas dissolved in their blood is exhaled through the lungs. This is the danger of the deep, the part feared most. "Sharks are nothing compared to the bends," Bass says.
For the next eight years, George Bass and his Turkish colleagues will spend much of their time excavating and analyzing the contents of that ancient shipwreck, the oldest ever discovered. For Bass, it is his greatest achievement to date. He calls the Ulu Burun wreck "an archaeologist's dream come true."
"It was a staggering loss for its time," Bass recalls as we chat in his office at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, where INA has its headquarters. The walls around him are covered with plaques, awards, and photos chronicling more than 30 years of underwater archaeology. Among them is a color photo of him and 14 others who received the National Geographic Society's Centennial Awards in 1988 for their outstanding scientific achievements. On his desk
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