Customer Reviews

Underwater archaeology: The NAS Guide to Principles and Practice

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...also the only one for undergraduate course use (in English).

The very long-awaited successor to the 1992 edition edited by Martin Dean et al., this Second Ed. has fewer pages but is in a larger format, so I estimate it's about the same word count. As one might expect, the new "NAS Handbook" updates the technological advances of the past decade and a half (remote sensing surveys, use of GPS, GIS-based mapping) while leaving the underlying principles of archaeology pretty much unchanged. It also contains new material on conservation of underwater cultural resources, and a brief review of different nation-states' legislative frameworks for protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage, commonly known as Submerged (or Marine) Cultural Resource Management in the USA. This edition has some great color plates as a new feature, but only a few of Ben Ferrari's wonderful b&w line drawings (highly informative cartoons, almost) that were a unique aspect of the original edition. The "References and Further Reading" are as recent as 2007. Finally, there are appendices on how to properly record anchors and ordnance, the two most common artifact types that divers are likely to encounter, and a summary of the NAS training program (not very well known in the USA, unfortunately).

Next year I'm going to use it as an undergrad textbook, not because it's the only one available, but also a reputable successor to the first edition.