An Annotated WWII Underwater Archaeology Bibliography

Journal of Maritime Archaeology https://doi.org/10.1007/s11457-024-09417-3 RESEARCH An Annotated WWII Underwater Archaeology Bibliography Jennifer F. McKinnon1 Accepted: 7 September 2024 © The Author(s) 2024 Abstract With four decades of WWII underwater archaeology publications, the time is nigh to create a comprehensive bibliography and conduct an analysis of trends within the growing subfield. This paper presents a decade-by-decade analysis of academic publications accessible through a number of search engines and databases. It analyzes the papers through the categories of author gender, heritage type, region, and focus. Finally, it provides the data set by which this analysis was accomplished in a comprehensive bibliography. Keywords Bibliography · WWII · Underwater archaeology Introduction While the field of underwater archaeology developed as a subdiscipline in the 1960s and 1970s, the investigation of underwater cultural heritage related to the Second World War did not commence until the late 1980s. With nearly four decades of projects under our weight belts, it is timely to produce a comprehensive bibliography of our published works. This paper presents a bibliography of scholarly literature published on WWII underwater archaeological sites and includes an analysis of sites, research topics, and publication demographics by decade. What began as a focus on the establishment of a site type and its management, evolved into studies of site formation and conservation, that further developed into research dedicated to public and community engagement, decolonizing environmental risk assessments in post-colonial contexts, and redemptive work exploring conflict in conjunction with modern post-colonial issues and concerns. Below is an analysis of the literature and a bibliography, for your pleasure. Methodology A number of online databases including Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science, and JSTOR for publicly available published articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, and books was searched first. This was followed by a search of ProQuest for theses and * Jennifer F. McKinnon 1 Program in Maritime Studies, East Carolina University, Greenville, USA Vol.:(0123456789) Journal of Maritime Archaeology dissertations. Where possible research websites including Academia.edu and ReseachGate. net were cross-referenced. Grey literature, such as reports written for or by state, federal, or international organizations, was not included in the database, unless already publicly available, for several reasons. First the author was unable to access state, federal, and international agency databases to locate and review reports as this would have required traveling to agencies and organizations to review or gaining online access through portals that require a variety of permits, permissions, and software. Second, the ability to search all grey literature databases and be comprehensive was impossible and thus the author did not want to skew data analysis by including those that could be and excluding those that could not be accessed. And third, a commitment to accessibility to the public and academia is important to the author, and thus, if it can be found on library shelves or online in repositories that are at minimal accessible to academic institutions and at maximum to the public (i.e. ResearchGate.net), then those publications were included. It was hoped that where there are extensive grey literature reports beyond commercial cultural resource management publications, the work would be reported in more readily accessible publications like journals, books, chapters, and theses. Another limitation to access is related to language barriers. The author holding only English and Spanish language skills, was limited by the online searches she could conduct. As such, there is likely more literature available online in other languages that was unintentionally not included. The search for publications was as exhaustive as possible, although no doubt there are missed publications. Nevertheless, without the grey literature and some other language barriers, the themes and directions in trends still can be identified. Notably, there are a handful of works that fall outside the quantitative analysis. These are however listed in the bibliography below as valuable starting points for the field’s development: Collins 1976; Lenihan et al. 1989; Carrell et al. 1991; Delgado et al. 1991. Collins 1976 is a legal analysis heavily influenced by its relative chronology during the Soviet Period, and before the research implications of underwater archaeology would supersede the salvage concerns associated with government secrecy. Lenihan et al. (1989); Carrell et al. (1991); Delgado et al. (1991) are grey literature and represent the beginnings of the National Park Service’s Submerged Resources Center contributions in the late 1980s to large scale survey work that begins to touch on WWII wrecks. For the purposes of grouping the quantitative data into time periods, decades were used as the delineation beginning with the first publication in 1990 and ending in February 2024. Decades were grouped into 1990–1999, 2000–2009, 2010–2019, and 2020–present. Publications were reviewed and classified by first author gender (where possible), site type (i.e. ship, aircraft, vehicle, etc.), global region of focus (i.e. Europe, Asia, Pacific, etc.), primary topic focus, and secondary topic focus. A total of 263 publications were reviewed dating between 1990 and February 2024—the cut off for this publication. Results and Trends Nearly 40 years of publications show some interesting, yet unsurprising, trends in research. The first publication located as part of this quantitative analysis was published in 1992 and a total of 11 publications were published from 1990 to 1999 (Fig. 1). All 11 publications are first-authored by males (Delgado 1992; Foster 1993; Cooper 1994; Whipple 1995; Jung 1996; Wills 1997; Rodgers et al. 1998; Drew 1998; Maharaj 1999; Walker 1999; Neyland 1999) with only one female represented as a co-author (Rodgerset et al. Journal of Maritime Archaeology Fig. 1  Publications data from 1990–1999 1998).1 Approximately two-thirds (N = 7) of the publications focused on WWII aircraft as opposed to ships (N = 4). Nearly half of the publications were focused regionally on the Pacific while the remainder were non-specific, and one publication centered on Australia. The primary focus of research was split at 45 percent (N = 5) for both management and research with one publication related to law. 1 The author recognizes that gender is not limited to two categories and that research has historically struggled to identify non-binary participants due to binary-focused measurement practices. Efforts to identify non-binary participants were made, but only within the knowledge of the author. Future studies should incorporate methods for identifying inclusive gender categories. Journal of Maritime A (...truncated)