ELearning courses before the fieldschool begins

Sunday 31.7.2016

No previous experience or nautical archaeological courses were required to apply to the fieldschool. That was good for me because I did not have any! In Finland this type of fieldschool experience would be impossible to obtain, because all divers doing hands-on archaeology on wrecks must have a degree in nautical archaeology. Shortest certification programs take a few years. Amateurs can look but not touch. No wonder that very little work is done.

Before the Mazotos fieldschool started, we all needed to complete a specially tailored NAS elearning course Underwater Combined. It consisted of NAS Introduction to Maritime Archaeology and NAS Underwater Archaeology courses.

Lessons were implemented in Moodle, and worked relatively well. They included textual learning materials as well as short videos and simple practical problems. Each lesson was followed by a short and easy quiz. There was also a summary exam at the end of the first course. Obviously we were not taught to be masters of anything, but just given rudimentary basics on which to build up in the fieldschool. I think this was a very good way to guarantee at least some common baseline knowledge for all students in fieldschool. Also, it would have been waste of time to cover all this material by the fieldschool instructors.

NAS ELearning Course Underwater Combined
(https://moodle.nauticalarchaeologysociety.org/)

Dive safety

Saturday 30.7.2016

It is interesting to see how this type of "professional" diving environment differs from that of the recreational diving I am used to. The differences will materialize only in practice at the site, but already some notes can be made.

Everyone must fill in the Dive Medical Self Certification Statement from the World Recreational Scuba Training Council (WRSTC).  If you answer "no" to any of the numerous health questions, then you must go through a proper physical and provide doctor's certificate for being fit to dive. This form is very similar to the form (in Finnish) used in Finland. Nothing new here.

We all bring our own dive gear, except for the tanks and weights. Dive gear must be properly serviced and must have minimum service life of three months before the fieldschool begins. In recreational diving everyone takes care of his own gear for pure self preservation, but this time the service records may actually be checked. Everything is clearly done so that in case of an accident you have a paper trail to prove that proper procedures have been followed.

All divers must have redundant source of buoyancy. This sounds simple enough, but turned out to be difficult for me. I was planning to use my wet suit, which I know from previous experience to be quite suitable temperature-wise to 45m Cyprus waters in August. However, that would now require leasing a twin bladder wing (Buoyancy Compensator Device, BCD), because my own wing has only one air bladder. You do not need twin bladder wings when diving with dry suit, because the dry suit is itself a BCD. I did not want to take my cold water Loitokari dry suit to Mazotos, because it would be too warm with fixed wool-lined hood and integrated mittens, and it would be cumbersome to do precise work on the wreck with those mittens. Also, leasing a twin bladder wing for 4 weeks would cost real money, and I really wanted a good reason to have a new dry suit. So, after careful thinking I ended up buying a new Dive Rite 905 trilaminate dry suit with neck and wrist seals. You can use a wet suit hood and gloves with it, but I also got the attachments to use dry gloves. Now I need to practice using it before the fieldschool begins.

Everyone must have proper insurance. In practice this means at least DAN Sport Silver level, which covers technical diving and has no depth limits. This is what technical divers need anyway. They wanted to see our diving certificates in advance, and collected next of kin contact information for emergencies. All this feels very professional and gives you a nice feeling of being well taken care of.

NAS  uses well a defined Code of Practice for safe diving (see NAS Archaeology Underwater - Guide to Principles and Practice), and no doubt it will be followed, with local adjustments. There will be stringent bookkeeping, and possibly a standby diver with full dive gear on at the surface vessel at all times. We use relatively good bookkeeping with dive club trips, but safety divers are not always there, and even then only for surface rescue purposes with no dive gear on. So, this will be different. I can already envision me sitting there for an hour in nice 40C weather with full dive gear on in my dry suit. At least I can console myself that it could be worse - I could be in my Loitokari.

Location of the Mazotos wreck. Modern Larnaca is just south of  Ancient Kition.
(Demesticha, The 4th-Century-BC Mazotos Shipwreck, Cyprus: a preliminary report, Int J of Nautical Archaeology 2010).

How did I locate the Fieldschool 2016?

Thursday 28.7.2016

I have been asked a few times that how on earth did I ever find out about this fieldschool. It was quite simple.  I have been diving the wreck Zenobia in Larnaca for many years in a row, with Jouni, Sami, Vesa, Late and Kirsi. We have always used the same dive shop, DiveIn Larnaca, and I follow them on Facebook. In February, Sheri posted there a link to an article in local English speaking newspaper CyprusMail. The article discusses the Mazotos wreck and the nautical archaeology already done on it. It also mentioned that they need volunteers from different countries to join them doing research on the wreck.

Photomosaic of Mazotos shows over 500 amphorae, which are disposable wine or olive oil jars. (Photo from the CyprusMail article)

Our usual Zenobia trip was becoming unlikely, as the usual gang seemed to have other plans. I googled Mazotos and very quickly found the invitation for the Mazotos Fieldschool 2016. It had still one month to sign up, and so I promptly did so. I mentioned the fieldschool to Jouni at the Wreck Diving seminar next week and he got also very interested in signing up.

The application needed referrals, preferably from technical diving instructors. On that we lucked out again. In addition to diving in Zenobia with DiveIn Larnaca, we had taken many technical diving courses there, and Chris wrote references for us. It would have been hard to find a better referee.

Just before acceptance decisions were made, we were told that the project got extra funding and we could continue working on the wreck for 2 weeks after the fieldschool. We immediately signalled our interest on that. I needed to discuss it with my department at U of Helsinki, because the extra two weeks overlapped the Autumn Semester. I was able to work it out. Jouni had used two extra vacation weeks already for the fieldschool and eventually he could not extend his stay any longer.

The Cyprus Underwater Archaeological Fieldschool 2016 is taught by Nautical Archaeological Society (NAS) and University of Cyprus staff. It includes underwater excavation, surveying, photography, artefact illustration and post-fieldwork artefact handling. The Mazotos wreck lies in 45m depth 14 miles south-west of Larnaca. Its cargo consists mainly of Chian amphoras and has been provisionally dated to the 3rd quarter of the 4th century BC.
The actual fieldschool is two weeks (20.8.-3.9.2016). After that there is two weeks of work on the Mazotos wreck. This blog will contain Teemu's remarks during this time.