What: 2008 Northeast Florida Symposium on Maritime Archaeology
When: 12 to 15 March 2008
Where: St. Augustine, Florida, at the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve (GTM-NERR) Education Center, also at the St. Augustine Lighthouse on 15 March
Click here to visit the 2008 Symposium webpage, with more info including full program
The Symposium includes three days of presentations at the GTM-NERR Education Center by invited speakers covering a host of topics including prehistoric underwater archaeology, conservation of artifacts from underwater sites, the archaeology of shipwreck sites in Florida and around the world, management of submerged cultural resources, and graduate student archaeological research projects. The final day of the Symposium coincides with the St. Augustine Lighthouse’s Maritime Festival, a family-oriented event held at the Lighthouse and expected to draw thousands for a day of fun, food, music, maritime-oriented games and activities, and three encore presentations.


All lectures, workshops, and presentations are FREE and open to the public. Interested individuals may attend all of the presentations, or may choose to come and go as they please throughout the three days (Wednesday – Friday) of slideshow sessions and the Lighthouse Festival on Saturday. There are fees for (optional) lunches at the GTM-NERR, the dinner reception at the Lighthouse, and the Friday afternoon river cruise/sonar demonstration.
One of many themes at this year’s Symposium is the archaeology of pirate ships, as our keynote speaker David Moore discussed the ongoing excavations of the North Carolina wreck believed to be that of Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge, while Frederick Hanselmann returned early from an excavation in Dominican Republic waters of a 17th century shipwreck believed to have belonged to Captain Kidd. Other papers discuss the deepwater excavation by remotely operated vehicles of a 4,000-ft-deep shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico, the problem with treasure hunting and the 1715 Spanish fleet lost off Florida’s Atlantic Coast, the Revolutionary War privateer Defense, and an update on LAMP’s archaeological work in St. Augustine waters.