Going on the Account : Examining Golden Age Pirates as a Distinct Culture Through Artifact Patterning

Abstract

Pirates of the Golden Age (1650-1726) have become the stuff of legend. The way they looked and acted has been variously recorded through the centuries, slowly morphing them into the pirates of today's fiction. Yet, many of the behaviors that create these images do not preserve in the archaeological environment and are just not good indicators of a pirate. Piracy is an illegal act and as a physical activity, does not survive directly in the archaeological record, making it difficult to study pirates as a distinct maritime culture. This thesis examines the use of artifact patterning to illuminate behavioral differences between pirates and other sailors. A framework for a model reflecting the patterns of artifacts found on pirate shipwrecks is presented. Artifacts from two early eighteenth century British pirate wrecks, Queen Anne's Revenge (1718) and Whydah (1717) were categorized into five groups reflecting behavior onboard the ship, and frequencies for each group within each assemblage were obtained. The same was done for a British Naval vessel, HMS Invincible (1758), and a merchant vessel, the slaver Henrietta Marie (1699) for comparative purposes. There are not enough data at this time to predict a "pirate pattern" for identifying pirates archaeologically, and many uncontrollable factors negatively impact the data that are available, making a study of artifact frequencies difficult. This research does, however, help to reveal avenues of further study for describing this intriguing sub-culture.