L'EPAVE AUX  CARRONADES

Valentine Verrijken.

Valentine is a new member to the team and has been tasked with being the liaison with maritime archaeologists and students in Belgium and ADMAT. Valentine is slated to join the Team on The Tile Wreck survey in Monte Cristi during the summer of 2008.

Miss Verrijken began her archaeological career when she started to study Art and Archaeology in the Free University of Brussels. It is at the V.U.B. Diving Center, i.e. the diving center of her university, that she learned how to dive and it quickly became a passion for her. She is the equipment manager of the Diving Center and she also enables her fellow divers get a sense of what archaeology could be like.

The last few years she has been working extensively on a maritime archaeological study about artifacts of five ships in the North Sea. The purpose of this study was to further investigate artifacts brought up by recreational divers form de SS Leerdam, WA Scholten, SS Kilmore, SMS Prangenhof and Queen of the Channel. This projects objective was given to her by Dr. Marnix Pieters, head of the Maritime Archaeology and Heritage Afloat unit of the Flemish Heritage Institute. She is currently finishing her MA where she is supervised by Prof. Dr. D. Tys of V.U.B.

During this project she had to handle all kinds of materials teaching her what underwater archaeology actually meant. Because there is almost no underwater archaeology in Belgium there was no chance of learning there how to actually perform an underwater excavation. She then searched for an opportunity outside of Belgium and contacted Dr. Simon Spooner to let his team teach it to her.

During her studies, she also participated at an excavation in Antwerp and a survey project in Snellegem. Besides this archaeological passion she also enjoys to sing and just to go diving for the underwater wildlife and she intends to travel a lot in order to learn as much as possible to help her country.