Gribshunden, en studie av site formation process

Sammanfattning:    Today’s knowledge about late medieval ships is very poor, especially when it comes to caravel-built warships in northern Europe. In 1971 some sport divers found a wreck in the archipelago of Ronneby, that proved to be the Danish king Hans great ship Gribshunden, which sank in 1495. The wreck has been investigated in recent years by Kalmar läns museum and MARIS from Södertörn högskola. The research potential is from an archaeological perspective tremendous. The wreck is in very good condition compared to other finds around the world, it is unique. My intention with this thesis is to find out why the wreck hasn’t disintegrated and totally disappeared like most of contemporary wrecks. To understand the factors that are involved in the decomposition process, the wreck is analyzed with regard to Keith Muckelroy´s maritime version of “site formation process”, which presents a set of analytic tools to assess how different processes affect a wreck and its find place, both in the short and long terms. Hopefully, this thesis might be useful when it comes to find still undiscovered wrecks in similar environments.