Asia Pacific Regional Conference on Underwater Cultural Heritage Proceedings

The Asia-Pacific Regional Conference on Underwater Cultural Heritage (APCONF) was the result of a fortuitous meeting of three maritime archaeologists at a UNESCO training session in Thailand. They recognized the lack of maritime-related conferences in the Asia-Pacific region at the time, and wanted to create a platform for professionals in the region to meet and exchange ideas. Ultimately their meeting resulted in the creation of the APCONF. Before the first meeting in 2011 no one knew whether there would ever be a second, but the enthusiasm and interest has done nothing but grow. The APCONF now meets every three years, rotating its location throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

One of the goals of the original APCONF was to have a tangible, enduring result from the conference. To distribute the conference information even more widely, conference organizers decided to also provide an online version of the papers. The non-profit Museum of Underwater Archaeology (http://www.themua.org) has hosted the proceedings since the first APCONF. Nearly all of the posters and papers presented at the meetings have been digitized and collected in these online proceedings, and are available to the public. In addition, session organizers, keynote speakers, and the conference organizers provided brief video introductions for later conferences, allowing the viewer more insight into the goals of the sessions and the conference itself.

As of November 2023, these proceedings bring together over six hundred papers of content exploring countless perspectives on the underwater cultural heritage of the Asia-Pacific region. They reflect the increasing interest and work being done in the area, and show the changing trends and expanding knowledge of underwater archaeological exploration over the past fifteen years. We encourage you to explore the repository of the past conference proceedings, and we look forward to continued growth of this exciting field.

-Dr. Michelle Damian