IU To Turn Kidd Shipwreck Into `Living Museum'
By Matt J. Weiss, November 18, 2008 @ 02:00 AM (EST)
Source: Chicagotribune.com
Indiana University archaeologists have won a $200,000 grant to turn the wreckage of a ship pirate Captain Kidd is believed to have commandeered and three other Caribbean sites into "living museums" that also preserve sensitive coral reefs.
The funding comes two months after IU scientists announced that they had found evidence confirming that a shipwreck off the coast of a tiny Dominican Republic island is the ruins of a 17th century ship Kidd once captured.
Charles Beeker, a scuba-diving archaeologist who teaches at IU, said the grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development will help safeguard the Kidd site, but its primary goal is to protect elkhorn coral, rare pillar coral and other reef systems at all four sites.
Beeker and archaeologist Geoffrey Conrad, who directs IU's William Hammond Mathers Museum, have been exploring underwater and land-based sites in the Dominican Republic for 12 years.
The funding comes two months after IU scientists announced that they had found evidence confirming that a shipwreck off the coast of a tiny Dominican Republic island is the ruins of a 17th century ship Kidd once captured.
Charles Beeker, a scuba-diving archaeologist who teaches at IU, said the grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development will help safeguard the Kidd site, but its primary goal is to protect elkhorn coral, rare pillar coral and other reef systems at all four sites.
Beeker and archaeologist Geoffrey Conrad, who directs IU's William Hammond Mathers Museum, have been exploring underwater and land-based sites in the Dominican Republic for 12 years.
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