Used f bass

American pioneer of underwater archaeology (–)

George Fletcher Bass (; December 9, – March 2, ) was an American archaeologist. An early practitioner of underwater archaeology, he co-directed the first expedition to entirely excavate an ancient shipwreck at Cape Gelidonya in and founded the Institute of Nautical Archaeology in

Early life and education

Bass was born on December 9, , in Columbia, South Carolina to Robert Duncan Bass, an English Literature professor and scholar of the American Revolutionary War, and Virginia Wauchope, a writer.^[1][2][3] His uncle was the archaeologist Robert Wauchope.^[4] In Bass moved with his family to Annapolis, Maryland, where his father took up active service with the US Navy in World War II and taught English at the United States Naval Academy.^[3][5] He was interested in both astronomy and the sea as a youth and did odd jobs for Ben Carlin, an adventurer who was the first person to circumnavigate the world in an amphibious vehicle.^[5]

After graduating high school he began studying for an English major at Johns Hopkins University; during his second year he did an exchange trip to England, attending what is now the University of Exeter, from which he was suspended along with forty other students for pulling a prank.

With nowhere else to go he accompanied his brother's roommate and his friends on a spring break trip to Taormina, Sicily, where he first became interested in archaeology as a career.^[5]

On returning to Johns Hopkins he switched majors and in he received an M.A. in Near Eastern Archaeology from the university, which improvised a major for him out of courses from the Near Eastern and Classics departments because they did not have an archaeology department.^[4][5] He then spent two years at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, where he excavated at Gordion.^[5][6] He began military service in , assigned in South Korea to a man army security group which was attached to the Turkish Brigade near the Korean Demilitarized Zone.

Operating around rice paddies he was suddenly responsible for equipment, food, logistics, and operations which was a formative learning experience for future archeology expeditions.^[5]

In he married Ann Bass (née Singletary), a pianist and piano teacher, who assisted him with his work. The couple had two sons.^[7]

Academic career

In Professor Rodney Young, Bass's colleague at the University of Pennsylvania, had learned about an unspoiled Bronze-Age Mediterranean shipwreck site from diver and journalist Peter Throckmorton.

Young invited Bass to work on the first expedition to entirely excavate an ancient shipwreck.

George f bass biography George F. Bass, who established the discipline of nautical archaeology, died on March 2, , at the age of George learned to dive at the local YMCA before heading out to the field. The Gelidonya wreck sank c. It was the first excavation of an underwater shipwreck to conform to then-current terrestrial standards.

^[8] Excavation of the wrecksite, off the Turkish coast near Cape Gelidonya, began in the summer of In preparation, Bass took diving lessons at YMCA Philadelphia; he could take only one practical diving lesson before the excavation began.^[5] Bass became the co-director, alongside Joan du Plat Taylor, of the expedition.^[5][9][10]

During the s he excavated shipwrecks of the Bronze Age, Classical Age, and the Byzantine.^[5] In he received a Ph.D in Classical Archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a faculty member for several years.^[6]

In , Froelich Rainey, director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, authorized Bass to write a report on the Penn Museum's controversial accession of a set of gold objects believed to have come from the site of Troy, in what is now Turkey.

The museum had purchased the gold from a private antiquities dealer. Bass, who at the time was assistant curator in the Mediterranean Section, wrote a report which influenced the museum's articulation of a statement on museum ethics. This was the Pennsylvania Declaration of , which anticipated UNESCO's subsequent issue of the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership and Cultural Property.

As an innovator, Bass adapted traditional land-based archaeological surveying techniques to the seabed and contributed to key technological advances, such as an underwater "telephone booth" in which divers could communicate with the surface; 3D photogrammetry to better map sites; and the use of side-scan sonar to locate wrecks.^[11][12] In he began using the Asherah, the first commercially built American research submersible, to examine and photograph shipwrecks.

In Bass founded the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA); he left the University of Pennsylvania the following year.^[13][14] In INA moved its headquarters to Texas A&M University, where Bass became a professor and held the George T. and Gladys H. Abell Chair in Nautical Archaeology.^[15]

Bass was awarded the National Medal of Science in for "pioneering ocean technology and creating a new branch of scholarship, nautical archaeology, thereby providing new knowledge of the histories of economics, technology, and literacy." The award was presented by President George W.

Bush.^[16]

He died on March 2, , in a hospital in Bryan, Texas, aged ^{[17][18][19][20]}

Awards and honors

Interviews

Bass was interviewed by Adam Davidson with colleague Fred van Doorninck on This American Life in ^[26]

Books

• Beneath the Seven Seas&#;: Adventures with the Institute of Nautical Archaeology by George Fletcher Bass (London&#;: Thames & Hudson, ) ISBN&#;, OCLC&#;
• Archaeology Under Water by George Fletcher Bass (New York, Praeger, ), OCLC&#;
• Archaeology Beneath the Sea by George Fletcher Bass (New York&#;: Walker, ) ISBN&#;, OCLC&#;
• Ancient ships in Bodrum by George Fletcher Bass (Istanbul: Boyut, ) ISBN&#;, OCLC&#;
• A History of Seafaring Based on Underwater Archaeology by George Fletcher Bass (New York, Walker, ) ISBN&#;, OCLC&#;
• Ships and Shipwrecks of the Americas: a history based on underwater archaeology by George Fletcher Bass (New York, N.Y.&#;: Thames and Hudson, ) ISBN&#;X, OCLC&#;
• Cape Gelidonya: a Bronze Age Shipwreck by George Fletcher Bass (Philadelphia, American Philosophical Society, ), OCLC&#;
• Navi e Civiltà&#;: Archeologia Marina by George Fletcher Bass (Milano&#;: Fratelli Fabri, ), OCLC&#;
• Yassi Ada by George Fletcher Bass and Frederick H Van Doorninck (College Station&#;: Published with the cooperation of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology by Texas A&M University Press, ©) ISBN&#;, OCLC&#;
• Geschiedenis van de scheepvaart weerspiegeld in de scheepsarcheologie by George Fletcher Bass (Bussum&#;: Unieboek, ) ISBN&#;, OCLC&#;
• Serce Limani, vol.

  1: the ship and its anchorage, crew, and passengers by George Fletcher Bass and others (College Station: Published with the cooperation of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology by Texas A&M University Press, ) ISBN&#;, OCLC&#;

• Beneath the wine dark sea&#;: nautical archaeology and the Phoenicians of the Odyssey by George F Bass, OCLC&#;
• A diversified program for the study of shallow water searching and mapping techniques by George F Bass; Donald M Rosencrantz; United States Dept.

  of Navy, Office of Naval Research; University of Pennsylvania, University Museum (Philadelphia, Pa.: The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, ), OCLC&#;

• Glass treasure from the Aegean by George Fletcher Bass (Washington: National Geographic Society, ), OCLC&#;
• Shipwrecks in the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology by George Fletcher Bass and Bodrum Sualtı Arkeoloji Müzesi (Bodrum&#;: Museum of Underwater Archaeology, ) ISBN&#;, OCLC&#;
• New tools for undersea archeology by George Fletcher Bass (v.

  , no. 3 (Sept. ) (Washington, D.C.&#;: National Geographic Society, ©), OCLC&#;

• Archäologie unter Wasser by George Fletcher Bass (Bergisch Gladbach: Lübbe, ), OCLC&#;
• Marine archaeology: a misunderstood science by George Fletcher Bass (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, ©), OCLC&#;
• Tesori in fondo al mare by George Fletcher Bass (Milano: Sonzogno, ), OCLC&#;

References