544 IKUWA6: 544–555 Shipwrecks and Communities: Responses to Shipping Mishaps in Victoria, Australia Brad Duncan Institution [REMOVE highlighted]: Email [REMOVE highlighted]: Martin Gibbs Institution [REMOVE highlighted]: Email [REMOVE highlighted]: Abstract Shipwrecks have been conventionally examined archaeologically from various aspects (including ship design, cargoes and trade route identification, and have traditionally been regarded as tragic catastrophic events. Victorian shipwrecks occurred within a near-shore arena, often close to the coasts of small isolated maritime communities. These incidents potentially stimulate a range of reactive behavioural traits and perceptions from nearby residents, which have not been extensively explored, and may offer new understandings of the effects of shipping mishaps on frontier societies. A range of responses to altruistic/opportunistic reactions to maritime disasters is examined in a maritime cultural landscape context, along with new archaeological characterisations and material culture associated with the exploitation of shipping mishaps around Queenscliffe in Victoria, Australia. These observations present interesting new insights into understanding the maritime cultural landscapes of shipping mishaps and their subsequent archaeological signatures from social and cultural perspectives. Keywords Shipwrecks, strandings, subsistence salvage, maritime cultural landscapes, social aspects Introduction The Australian coastline offers a rich assortment of physical remains of shipwrecks, many of which after over 40 years of archaeological research, have been well documented in terms of technical construction, information on transport and trade links, cargoes carried etc. However, traditional approaches portray shipwrecks as episodic and singular events which signal the transformation point of these vessels from the systemic to the archaeological context, and consequently a terminus of their cultural utility, other than occasional reference to salvage activity as a site formation process (Gavin-Schwartz and Holtorf 1999: 5). Nowhere is this more evident than in the often misused concept of a wreck as ‘time capsule’, suggesting a static terminus to the process (Dean et al. 1996: 32, 214; Gould 2000: 12–3; Muckelroy 1978: 56–7). In truth, many coastal ‘shipping mishaps’ (wrecks and strandings) occurred near to the shore and close to populations, with ongoing interactions with and effects upon sites and the neighbouring communities. An aim of the authors’ research is to demonstrate that the wreck event was Must one stage in the transformation of a vessel to a derelict, and eventually into a place in one or several cultural landscapes. The incidence of a shipping mishap might signal the end of a vessel’s operational life, but could also stimulate new behavioural traits from nearby residents through its introduction as a new element into an area (Duncan 2006). In many cases these coastal groups were exposed to multiple low and high intensity shipping mishaps. The remains of these vessels or their cargoes might be utilised continuously long after the wrecking ‘event’ and play an active and cross-generational role as an ongoing economic resource. Similarly, the mechanisms established to cope with shipping mishaps and their prevention also influenced the formulation of a social and economic relationship both within and beyond the township. This paper, summarising aspects of a wider and ongoing study (Duncan and Gibbs 2015), considers community perceptions, social and economic and other responses to shipping mishaps, and the possible archaeological signatures of those activities. We explore in our case study the characteristics of several resultant thematic maritime cultural landscapes in and around the township of Queenscliff, in the Borough of Queenscliffe, southern Port Phillip Bay in Victoria, Australia. 1 The study incorporates not only historical and archaeological sources, but also social data derived from regional oral histories and local knowledge of archaeological sites. 1૮ Queenscliff refers to the township; Queenscliffe refers to wider borough including Queenscliff and Point Lonsdale.