Faught, an assistant professor in anthropology, will teach undergraduate and graduate students. Thanks to his hiring, the latter will soon be able to earn academic specialty certificates through the anthropology department. The certificates will allow them to showcase their skills in underwater archaeology. But it does have its rewards. He and other researchers eventually located a dozen prehistoric sites no one had found before.
Underwater archaeology is a young discipline.
It didn't really begin until the 1960s, Faught said, when the technology to explore underwater sites emerged. Since then, the handful of university programs that came with it have focused on shipwrecks more than prehistoric sites, Faught said. But Florida's coastal waters are rich in both. FSU students in the program will spend as much time on the remains of prehistoric Florida as they do observing the sunken boats that mark a more modern Florida. That's where we'll be taking the students.