The study in 2002 was aimed at answering two questions:
What is the stability of the assemblage?
The answer to this depends upon the nature of the artefacts in the assemblage:
- There is insufficient sediment to protect organic materials, and these have all been lost.
- The iron artefacts are in a late stage of deterioration, and it is probable that many have been lost.
- Pottery is in thermodynamic equilibrium with oxygenated seawater, and the does not appear to be at risk to physical processes, at least in the deep part of the site.
Is there a shipwreck, part of a shipwreck, or are materials coming from elsewhere?
The small number of guns, and lack of artefacts other than these and the pottery, suggested that much of the ship is missing. The artefacts discovered to date might represent part of a jettisoned cargo, or other parts of the ship might remain to be found.
The results of the monitoring studies indicate that few material types can survive on the site. Heavy iron objects remain simply because of their scale, smaller items of iron and other materials subject to corrosion or other oxidative processes, will have been lost completely. As a consequence it is possible that the materials discovered to date reflect all that remains of a complete shipwreck on this site.
Once in the deepwater part of the site, it is clear that material does not move. We cannot rule out the possibility that the pottery has been transported from a nearby source in shallower water where current movement might be sufficient to dislodge and transport it. The lack of wear of the pottery, however, suggests strongly that this is not the case.
Our studies indicate that only ceramics remain from a more complete assemblage, exposed where they fell out of their packaging and sank in the 16th Century.