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ChaptEr FiFtEEn Naval Battlefields as Cultural Landscapes The Siege of Yorktown John d. broadwatEr introduCtion The term cultural landscape, when applied to military sites, typically refers to battlefields or encampments . Even though “landscape” implies a terrestrial setting, the concept is equally valid for describing and analyzing naval battles. In fact, most naval battles were fought near land and were almost always associated with complex multi-national political conflicts. The scope and significance of naval battles rarely ends at the shoreline. Analyzing naval engagements within the broad natural and cultural landscapes across which they took place and with respect to the historic events that define them, imparts additional significance and meaning both to the events and to the natural contexts in which they occurred. In fact, naval battles can only be fully interpreted and given historic meaning by studying them as individual events within the larger context of natural, military, and political events that were taking place. Examples that illustrate the application of the naval landscape concept include: 1. The Spanish Armada: In 1588, Spain launched a long-anticipated invasion of England using a massive fleet of ships of all sizes to transport soldiers across the English Channel. The Armada was defeated by a fortuitous combination of English warships and severe storms that scattered and wrecked many Spanish ships. The naval landscape of the battle included sites of preparation and embarkation in Spain, English shore defenses, and virtually all the waters around the British Isles (Martin and Parker 1999). 2. The Battle of Yorktown: In 1781, a British transport fleet sunk at Yorktown, Virginia, was one component of a battlefield landscape that encompassed American, French, and British land fortifications, a small port town, a group of supply ships, and great opposing fleets at sea, all within the broader theater of the American War for Independence and ongoing conflicts in Europe (Sands 1983, 1988). The Yorktown landscape is explored in more detail later in this chapter. 3. The Battle of Hampton Roads: The famous 1862 battle between the newly-constructed ironclad warships USS Monitor and CSS Virginia was a pivotal event in the ongoing strategic employment of naval power by the Union to blockade Southern ports thereby strangling the Confederacy early in the American Civil War. The battle landscape included Union and Confederate coastal forts and virtually all the waters of Hampton Roads (Tidewater), Virginia (Davis 1975; Holzer and Mulligan 2006). 4. The Attack on Pearl Harbor: The Japanese carrier-based attack on U.S. military facilities at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on 7 December 1941, was a response to deteriorating Japanese-American relationships and a Japanese perception of U.S. weakness in the Pacific. The latter was based on German aggression that threatened to draw the United States into the European war. The Pearl Harbor landscape encompassed a vast Pacific Ocean area beginning west of the Hawaiian Islands, where the Japanese carrier fleet launched their airborne attack, to the coastal waters around O’ahu. This area was all within the larger context of global warfare and the threat of radical shifts in global political and military influence (Prange 1986; Weintraub 1991). 178 john d. broadwater Naval battles such as these provide historical archaeologists with opportunities for interpreting submerged archaeological sites within broader contexts . In fact, data from these “underwater battlefields ” can add entirely new perspectives to the written records of a military event at sea. Technology is available for locating and investigating submerged evidence of naval conflict, but special skills and equipment are required to extract valid archaeological data from such sites. what is undErwatEr arChaEoloGy? The archaeological specialty that deals with submerged sites is generally referred to as underwater, or maritime archaeology (see Conlin and Russell, chap. 5), although the more specific terms nautical and marine archaeology are sometimes used (see glossary). The most important skill for a maritime archaeologist is academic training in historical or prehistoric archaeology, depending on the site types to be investigated. George Bass (1966:13), who paved the way to scientific underwater archaeology, stated: “Archaeology under water, of course, should be called simply archaeology. We do not speak of . . . mountain archaeologists, nor . . . jungle archaeologists. . . . The basic aim in all these cases is the same. It is all archaeology.” Keith Muckelroy (1978:6), a pioneering British maritime archaeologist, provided a definition of maritime archaeology relating to our study of naval landscapes : “[M]aritime archaeology is the scientific study, through the surviving material evidence, of all aspects of seafaring: ships, boats, and their equipment; cargoes , catches, or passengers...

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