Diving into Research. A Talk about the NEENAWA Scientific Diving Course and a resulting new Project at Lake Ohrid.

A central part of the Institutional Partnership (SCOPES) “Network in Eastern European Neolithic and Wetland Archaeology” (NEENAWA, 2015–2018) was a European Scientific Diver (ESD) course, realized in summer 2017. Together with participants from Russia, the Ukraine and the FY Republic of Macedonia we, four Bernese students, successfully absolved the examination which was held under the conditions of the German commission for Scientific Diving (KFT). The first part of this presentation will show what it means to be trained as a scientific diver under European law, to give an idea of what we did during our course and what the advantages of an education within the framework of the European Scientific Diving Panel are. The course has been conducted at the Bay of Bones, a Bronze Age pile dwelling settlement on the shore of Lake Ohrid, FY Republic of Macedonia. The second part gives an outlook on the new prospects that the ESD course opened for us. With colleagues we met during this course and NEENAWA project, we have started to plan new research activities. The aim was to apply scientific diving as a method to bring forward dendrochronology where it has not been used so far. We chose the Bay of Bones at Lake Ohrid as research site. During the ESD-course a small survey was carried out which already raised several questions we want to explore further. In about 5 m depth lie well-preserved cultural layers with thousands of piles and artifacts. Until now the chronology of this site is mainly based on ceramic typology. The goal of the project is to change this by applying combined dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating. As a method, photogrammetry together with a combination of a standard grid on the lake floor and DGPS will be used. This allows systematic, fast documentation resulting in a georeferenced map of the sampled piles.