By Amy Borgens
ACUA Board Member
Social media is a powerful form of communication that, when yielded carefully, can be a great informer of underwater archeological discoveries and current events. I am by no means a Luddite, but outside of work I rarely engage in social media because I have difficulty making the time for it as a contributor. Until that is, necessity calls. When it comes to public use of social media regarding coastal and shipwreck archeology, in my experience this most often is detrimental to site protection. The difficulty in protecting beached shipwrecks cannot be understated, and social media can be a double-edged sword.
Two of the shipwrecks at Brazos Island, Texas: (left) Site 41CF125 during a THC site visit in September 2024 and (right) site 41CF184 that was exposed on the beach from 1999 to ca. 2009 when it became fully submerged at low tide. Photos courtesy Texas Historical Commission.
Like elsewhere in the world, the Texas shoreline is in crisis, with erosion rates and sea level rise estimates surpassing U.S. and global averages; 80% of the Texas shoreline is erosional and portions of the Houston-Galveston area have experienced pronounced subsidence that was recognizable by the 1970s. The state has records for a dozen intertidal shipwrecks but the number of terrestrial sites along erosional riverbanks, inundated reservoirs, or along the shores, greatly eclipses shipwreck archeology in its totality—nearly 5,000 recorded pre-contact and historical land sites are submerged or semi-submerged in Texas. The south Texas coast, in particular, has a history of sharing its intertidal shipwrecks and terrestrial archeology after storms and pronounced erosional tidal events.
There is a heightened sensitivity for coastal shipwrecks, often due to the misperception that they can contain treasure and lead to personal fortune. In Texas, when encountered by the public, it is often believed these are pirate ships, Spanish galleons, or date to the Civil War, spurring the desire for individuals to own a personal piece of history. Since Hurricane Beulah in 1967, newspaper articles have described beachcombers cutting and removing pieces of Texas coastal shipwrecks as souvenirs. Fast forward to the present and local beach discoveries get splashed across group forums with a mixture of misinformation and guessing about a wreck’s identity to mass encouragement to souvenir collect the site. Images are posted not just of the shipwreck, but of the items recovered from it. In Texas, state law protects archeology on state public land, including beaches, and recovered artifacts are considered held in trust by the state. This is a frequently unknown fact here, within a mindset dominated by the expectation of finder’s keepers.
The Texas Historical Commission actively monitors its beach archeology, primarily through its own stewards and volunteers. However, in recent years, each unique discovery, successful monitoring, or agency site visitation is sometimes tempered by the almost immediate discovery that uniformed members of the public are advertising its location and encouraging salvage. Combating this sometimes onslaught of online traffic feels like an uphill battle, one that is becoming increasingly harder as tourism continues to increase at the state’s southern beaches. It is this part of Texas that is having an almost Renaissance of wreck exposure and notification, especially in the last five years, as littoral erosion and sea level rise aggressively reduce the shoreline. In this area the erosion rate is nearly double the state average (of 4.17 ft./yr.) or greater.
But therein lies a silver lining. When recently notified by a volunteer that a social media post shared pictures of recovered artifacts, social media became a tool for positive change. I joined the group and posted a friendly reply to the thread about site protections–that was held while my member status was pending. And importantly, I directly-messaged the individual under the presumption they might be unaware of state antiquities protections. I asked if they could help us by returning the artifacts to a locally named museum. The response was immediate, and the artifacts were returned. I was accepted to the group and the thread advertising the artifact recovery was voluntarily removed by its author.
Most often this is not the result of such efforts, and this positive exchange felt almost cathartic and a reinforcement of our role and responsibilities as site managers. We take these victories when we can get them, and in so doing can inspire new interests in history and site preservation. I still may mistrust social media as I too often seen the damage it wreaks to our treasured coastal sites. This silver lining, in this instance, reminded me of its promise.
Categorised in: Deep Thoughts