Filipe is the Frederick R. Mayer Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Nautical Archaeology Program at Texas A&M University, where he is in charge of the Ship Reconstruction Laboratory. Before coming to TAMU he was a manager at Centro Nacional de Arqueologia Náutica e Subaquática (CNANS), the Portuguese state agency for nautical archaeology, which he helped to create between 1995 and 1997. Prior to joining CNANS, he was a department director at the Instituto do Trabalho Portuário / Ministry of Sea, Portugal. Before that he was a civil engineer working for several design firms.

He received a Licenciatura in Civil Engineering from the Universidade Técnica de Lisboa in 1984, an M.B.A. from the Universidade Católica Portuguesa in 1994, and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Texas A&M University in 2001. He has conducted most of his research in Portugal, where he started his collaboration with Lisbon’s Museu Nacional de Arqueologia as an amateur in 1992.

Why I got into underwater archaeology . . .

In 1992, I called the National Museum of Archaeology to ask if I could drop by and deposit a number of artifacts found in the early 1980s that were languishing in my attic. The artifacts came from Baleal, the place where my family spent the long Portuguese summer holidays. As a result of my visit, I was invited to participate, as an amateur, in a series of underwater archaeology projects planned for the following summer.

As a result of this experience, in 1993 I became involved in the political fight against a short-lived law that authorized treasure hunting in Portugal. By 1995, I quit my job to work for the Ministry of Culture and for the creation of CNANS and the development of a project of archaeological excavation of a Portuguese Indiaman lost at the mouth of the Tagus River, near Lisbon, Portugal. This ship, presumed to be the nao Nossa Senhora dos Mártires, sank off the fortress of Sao Julião da Barra on September 14 1606 (Filipe Castro, The Pepper Wreck, College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005).

Favorite quote

"Society is like a stew, if you don't keep it stirred all the scum settles on the top."
Edward Abbey

About the Nautical Archaeology Program at Texas A&M University

The Nautical Archaeology Program (NAP) is part of the Department of Anthropology at Texas A&M University. Established in 1976, it offers Master and PhD programs in nautical archaeology. In the past three decades NAP students and faculty have conducted archaeological research, in conjunction with the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA), in more than thirty countries around the world, delving into time periods from prehistory to the recent past, and working with a plethora of societies and cultures. Students attending the program work in the classrooms and laboratories, as well as in the field, and are encouraged to pursue individual projects that will help direct nautical archaeology's future.

Ship Reconstruction Laboratory http://nautarch.tamu.edu/shiplab/

Centro Nacional de Arqueologia Náutica e Subaquática (CNANS) http://www.ipa.min-cultura.pt/cnans/

Nautical Archaeology Program http://nautarch.tamu.edu/

TAMU Department of Anthropology http://anthropology.tamu.edu/

Institute of Nautical Archaeology http://ina.tamu.edu/

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