Matthew A. Russell has been an archeologist with the National Park Service’s Submerged Resources Center since 1993. His education includes an M.A. in Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology from East Carolina University and a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from University of California, Santa Barbara. Since 1993, he has participated in or directed more than 30 projects in national park areas, and for state, federal and international agencies. He was Deputy Field Director for the H. L. Hunley Recovery Project in 2000 and is currently Project Director for the USS Arizona Preservation Project, a multi-year, interdisciplinary project designed to assess the current condition of the historic battleship in Pearl Harbor. He has been a member of Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA) since 1992, is the immediate past-chair of SHA’s UNESCO Committee, and was ACUA’s Secretary before being recently elected as Vice Chair.

Why I got into underwater archaeology…

I blame Robert Grenier and Dan Lenihan, Larry Murphy and Toni Carrell! I grew up on the coast in southern California and formed a natural fascination with the sea. At the same time, I became obsessed with archaeology, especially the romantic images of jungle-clad Mayan ruins like those from Stephens and Catherwood, or Mahout’s nineteenth century drawings of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. My earliest memories of underwater archaeology come from a series of great National Geographic articles from the early to mid-1980s, especially Grenier’s article on Basque Whalers in Red Bay, which for some reason made a deep impression on a very impressionable 16-year old. Disappointed I couldn’t major in underwater archaeology as an undergraduate, I was briefly sidetracked by marine biology until I saw a documentary about the National Park Service’s SCRU team (part of the BBC’s fantastic underwater archaeology series Discoveries Underwater) when I was a sophomore at UCSB. That did it – that’s what I wanted to do. I changed majors to cultural anthropology and set a course to make it so. Through a very fortunate series of events and a leap of faith by Larry Murphy and Dan Lenihan, I was offered a summer job with NPS-SCRU in 1993. Twelve years later, they still haven’t been able to get rid of me!

Favorite Quote:

As concerning ships, it is that which every one knoweth, and
can say, they are our weapons, they are our ornaments, they
are our strength, they are our pleasures, they are our
defence, they are our profit; the subject by them is made
rich, the kingdom through them strong, the prince in them
mighty; in a word, by them in a manner we live, the kingdom
is, the king reigneth.

The Trade's Increase
London, 1615

About the National Park Service’s Submerged Resources Center

With increasing awareness of America's underwater cultural heritage, the US National Park Service began documenting the location and condition of shipwrecks in the 1960's. This activity accelerated in the 1970's as park managers became more aware of the richness and international importance of submerged resources in the National Park System.

In 1980, the Submerged Cultural Resources Unit (known as SCRU) was formed and staffed by underwater archeologists and photographers to provide the expertise required by managers of national parks with submerged lands.

Renamed the Submerged Resources Center in 1999 to include natural resources, the core mission of the program has remained the same: to inventory and evaluate submerged resources in the National Park System and to assist other agencies, nationally and internationally, with underwater heritage resource issues.

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