Ship trap
Definition
A maritime hazard with an extensive collection of shipwreck sites. (Delgado (ed.) 1997, Encyclopaedia of Underwater and Maritime Archaeology. British Museum. pp. 377).
Description
Examples of ship traps are reefs jutting into narrow straits as at Yassiada in Turkey, or into a stream of passing maritime traffic.
"Shipwrecks, in many cases, are less isolated events than they are the results of the natural and cultural processes which operate over extended periods and which pattern their deposition in non-random and archaeologically knowable ways. Many shipwrecks are the results of mariners taking risks and losing... Ship traps can be seen as areas of poor odds for traversing seafarers, where the presence of wrecks is entirely predictable as the aggregate result of risk. Focusing on ship traps, as opposed to shipwrecks, stands in contrast to a traditional nautical archaeological approach that concentrates on a site as an isolated event rather than as the result of the intermeshed operation of cultural and natural systems. Through accumulated maritime knowledge transmitted via oral traditions and local histories, it is likely that the positions of many of these nautical hazards were known to sailors in the past, who developed routes to avoid them according to weather, time of year, and direction of travel."
"More recently, maritime hazards have been marked by lighthouses, buoys, and beacons with varying degrees of success... Ultimately, when one thinks of ship traps, perhaps a valid metaphor is a net, cast into the stream of passing maritime commerce. Some nets... tend only to catch commerce travelling in one direction, while others may catch ships moving in two or more directions. Conceptually, there could be ship traps that work in three, four, or even all directions. Understanding these ship traps and characterizing them should allow archaeologists to make informed statements regarding possible origins, destinations and directions of travel for shipwrecks which do not have readily available auxiliary documentation." (ibid.).
