J. Richard Steffy Ship Reconstruction Lab
The ShipLab was created by J. Richard Steffy in 1976 and today is one of the laboratories of the Centre for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation of the Anthropology Department at Texas A&M University. Our mission is to acquire and disseminate knowledge about shipbuilding through time. As a classroom our main objective is to provide an effective learning environment.
As a research laboratory our objective is to facilitate investigation, seek public and private research funds, and recruit and retain quality students for our projects. As an outreach institution we aim at providing in-formation, education, and guidance on the discipline of nautical archaeology and the importance of the world’s submerged cultural heritage, perhaps more than ever threatened by treasure hunting.
“At the University of Chicago I also was lucky enough to go through a general education program devised by Robert M. Hutchins, where science was presented as an integral part of the gorgeous tapestry of human knowledge. It was considered unthinkable for an aspiring physicist not to know Plato, Aristotle, Bach, Shakespeare, Gibbon, Malinowski and Freud – among many others.”
Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World