A shipwreck and other histories about maritime cultural landscapes: The Eduard Bohlen II

By Marta Laureanti

Archaeological sites are not isolated spots in the landscape.

They  can enhance perspectives on  past and  forgotten, sometimes contested, histories.

This is the case of shipwrecks.They  are part of memories, and layers of significance  embedded in their  cultural landscape. Never one unique meaning can represent a site.

As archaeologists our professional role is, through our research,  opening  the dialogue and the reflection upon  the past into the present  stimulating  different prospectives into context and societies.

The Eduard Bohlen II, a maritime cultural landscape

Eduard Bohlen II, wrecked in 1909 on the coast of Namibia in Africa. Launched at the Blohm and Voss shipyard in Hamburg on 23 October, 1891, the vessel was purchased by the Maritime Society of Congo and later joined the African Steamship AG Woermann-Line..

Served first as a mail, cargo, and passenger steam ship.

During the German colonial war  was a prison  for  the  Herero  living in Swakopmund, and those captured by troops along the railway line towards Kanbib. After use as a prison ship, Edward Bohlen II returned to passenger service combined with delivery missions of diamond mining supplies to the encampments.

The ship ran aground near Conception Bay in 1909. Not long after this

event, a diamond company set up mining operations at Conception Bay and historical documentation shows that some of the miners actually lived in the wreck remains duringthis time.

 In Lords of the Lost Frontier, Lawrence Green (1952:305) writes, ‘‘At one period natives working on the diamond fields lived in the Eduard Bohlen’s fo’c’stle, while the manager occupied the Captain’s quarters. At night it was strange to see lights gleaming from the port-holes of the ship in the desert.’’

Colonial past, labour fource, slavery, these are some of the histories that a shipwreck can remember us.

Interpreting and analyzing the historical messages of archaeological

sites are a challenge for reflect on the shared and contested heritage and on its issue of management.

Read more about the Bohlen II:

Harris L. • Jones J • Schnitzer K. (2007) Monuments in the Desert: A Maritime Landscape in Namibia. J Mari Arch (2012) 7:111–140

Green L (1952) Lords of the last frontier: the story of South West Africa and its people of all races. H. B.Timmins, Cape Town

STOP VIOLENCE AGAINST INFORMATION! The role of archaeologists in post conflict countries and multi ethnic modern societies, my point of view.

by M. Laureanti

In Sri Lanka, the situation is pretty bad. Just another attack  early this morning against one journalist.

.. Is a bit scary  even for  archaeologists this, and we want to stay together and defend the information.

Why Archaeology, archaeologists and heritage professional are  so important in doing and spread information?

Sri Lanka is a country  that has passed a brutal civil conflict that just ended i n 2009. The woods are still open, as in every post conflict situation. The role of culture and information is fundamental to  enhance dialogue, to stimulate  reflection and to allow ethnic  integration within the society.

Archaeological sites often were used as  stendard for nationalisms and means to justify a sort of cultural property about the past.

Archaology  is not a tool for politics but often is used i n this way, as  toy for  official interpreter of the History they want to write.

Archaeology is instead not a toy.

Archaeology tell us that .. "  the past  is a foreign country".

And so, at one more careful analysis the past that archaeology reveals is made by layers of interaction and different social actors. So must be no claim of property for just one interpretation of the past!!

So this is just one reason for what our  work is fundamental.

Be aware of this my dear archaeologist friends!

see also:

http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2013/08/25/leader-journalist-attacked/

Trees and ladders: A critique of the theory of human cognitive and behavioural evolution in Palaeolithic archaeology

• Marco Langbroek^a, b, , , 

• ^a Institute for Geo- and Bioarchaeology (IGBA), Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1085, NL-1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• ^b Research Institute CLUE (Heritage and History of the Cultural Landscape and Urban Environment), VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618211001418
"The challenge that adoption of a branching tree model creates is that ways have to be devised to account for unique cognitive expressions that are not covered by the existing framework of ethnography and primatology. In addition, notions about the “superiority” of “modern behaviour” over other forms of cognitive expression have to be abandoned. The advantage is that the model is structured to pertinent archaeological data and actually testable with archaeological data. Two case studies from the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic of Europe probe the construction of unique models for mobility strategies “bottom up” from archaeological data, providing a unique alternative to mobility models and their cognitive implications as derived from “bottom down” application of an ethno-primatological framework."