International Approaches to Underwater Cultural Heritage

This chapter considers international approaches to Underwater Cultural Heritage such as the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) the 1996 ICOMOS Charter for the Protection and Management of Underwater Cultural Heritage and the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage. The paper will also consider three case studies-the United States, Australia and Spain-to examine different national approaches to underwater cultural heritage law. The most common mechanism by which underwater archaeological sites throughout the world are protected is by using cultural heritage legislation (Bowens 2009: 45-52). In 1982 UNCLOS provided that =States have the duty to protect objects of an archaeological and historical nature found at sea and shall cooperate for this purpose' (Fletcher-Tomenius & Forrest 2000). National and state (or provincial) governments have the right to enact and enforce legislation and regulations for the protection and preservation of underwater cultural heritage lying in or under their internal waters and territorial seas sometimes have enacted legislation that includes the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) as far out as the edge of the Continental Shelf. In more recent years, multilateral attempts to control activity on, and to create standards for, the conduct of archaeological research on underwater cultural heritage sites, such as shipwrecks, have led to the creation of firstly the ICOMOS Charter for the Protection and Management of Underwater Cultural Heritage secondly, and perhaps more significantly, the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage.