Archeological register entry for the site known as "El pesquero" located in Champotón, in the State of Campeche. The archeologist is working on a grid and draws on her registry pad.
Even if humans have always tried to constantly devise different methods to extract objects from the water, whether natural, such as conchs and corals, or man-made, such as ship remains, the sole action of extracting does not mean that they are doing archeology. The practice of collecting devices originated so that the long antique-dealer tradition became a science. During the first decades of the 20th Century we began adopting a conscience of the value and the purpose of the archeological study. At the beginning the difference wasn´t as obvious between excavating and taking the found objects to be placed in display cabinets, and to do a scientific excavation were the materials are registered in a systematic manner and where each element is considered an indispensable piece of the puzzle that is yet to be solved. This exact same principle is applied to a cultural heritage that is found underwater: the sole extraction of an object does not mean we are doing archeology.
What could an underwater archeologist find? For hundreds and even thousands of years, the bodies of water have protected the material remains of human activity in the past cultures. However, once the means to be able to submerge existed in safe ways and for certain time periods, the archeologists saw the possibility to expand their discipline underwater. As archeology deals with the study of the cultural submerged remains in any body of water, it is possible to find, in submerged caves for example, historical remains of activities as ancient as in the prehistoric times or remains of Pleistocene fauna; in the cenotes and lagoons, evidence of the prehispanic cultures and in the ocean, parts of crafts that suffered from an accident when sailing. Summing it up, they are all the prints that our ancestors left behind from their activities relating to bodies of water, such as rituals, offerings, sailings and trades.
Extraction and first treatments on the fossil remains of an extinct proboscidean mammal (related in evolution with the elephants) found in a cenote in Yucatán´s Peninsula.
It is needed to say, that underwater archeology went trough various looting stages, meaning that the first divers that enjoyed using the SCUBA equipment invention didn´t let the opportunity pass of extracting objects from the remains of shipwrecks or prehispanic pieces that they found during their immersions.
Archeologists working on the registry of the remains of a cargo shipwreck of the 20th Century known as "Far Star" in Banco Chinchorro, in the State of Quintana Roo.
Ten years after Cousteau and Gagnan made diving popular, an American archeologist named George F. Bass decided to learn the discipline in order to undertake underwater archeological projects. The challenge wasn´t easy as on top of only extracting things from the water, he set out to apply in an underwater way, the excavation and registry techniques that were applied inland. That is why he is considered as "the father of underwater archeology". From his works, other archeologists from different parts of the world became interested in doing the same and that is when underwater archeology began to acquire scientific validity.