Rachel Lynelle Horlings 22 April 1979 – 16 March 2013

Rachel Lynelle Horlings died on 16 March 2013, while directing a field project in coastal Ghana. Rachel was born in Benue State, Nigeria, to Christian Reformed Church missionaries Andy and Linda Horlings. For those who knew her she was a devoted friend, personable colleague and engaged scholar. She developed an early interest in scuba diving and underwater archaeology, having been captivated by National Geographic accounts of George Bass’ research in the Mediterranean. She completed her BS and MA degrees in anthropology at Florida State University, her MA thesis focusing on the archaeology of three Late Antiquity shipwrecks from the Black Sea. Rachel sought to situate her underwater research within the wider contexts of anthropological archaeology and this led her to doctoral work at Syracuse University. Her work at Syracuse was supported by a prestigious Dr Nancy Foster Scholarship from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as by graduate assistantships from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

At Syracuse, Rachel joined the Central Region Project, a collaborative research group that focuses on Ghana's past during the period of the Atlantic trade. I initiated the group's archaeological work on the African settlement at Elmina, Ghana, site of the first and largest European outpost in Sub-Saharan Africa, in 1985. Efforts to identify underwater cultural resources associated with the early African-European trade at Elmina under the auspices of the Central Region Project commenced with work by Gregory Cook in 2000. His systematic maritime survey was the first project of its kind to be undertaken in West Africa and identified a mid-seventeenth-century shipwreck, probably that of the Dutch ship Groeningen, which blew up and sank while firing its salute guns at Elmina in 1647. This site was the focus of continued work by both Rachel and Andrew Pietruszka, another Syracuse University colleague.

While Rachel joined a collaborative project, she soon defined her own areas of interest. Her doctoral research was on the natural and cultural processes that impact shipwrecks and on techniques for the sampling of underwater sites. Rachel completed the major portion of her fieldwork for her dissertation during 2007 with primary support from a National Science Foundation Grant awarded to me. She conducted additional fieldwork in 2009 with a Waitt Foundation/National Geographic Society Grant. Rachel used side scan sonar, magnetometer data and sub-bottom profiling to search for other potential wreck sites and to reconstruct the natural and cultural processes that have impacted the Groeningen site. Employing a device of her own design, Rachel's micro-coring of the site was of key importance in recovering samples that were used to obtain radiocarbon dates on the hull remains. However, her research moved beyond narrow taphonomic issues to situate site formation processes within the wider cultural and historical landscapes of which ships and shipwrecks were part. In her dissertation, successfully defended in 2011 (Horlings 2012), Rachel drew on Mark Staniforth's concept of the archaeology of the event to provide a nuanced view of underwater sites in the maritime landscape. Her discussion moved beyond particularistic data to the role of the ship in reconstructing the past. This innovative vantage point has implications far beyond the culture history of coastal Ghana.

Rachel was characteristically enthusiastic about new projects. She had undertaken preliminary work on the Dukke Wells site in northeastern Nigeria and was planning to collaborate on a project in coastal Sierra Leone. Far from being tired of work in coastal Ghana, Rachel returned to the Central Region in 2013 to expand the marine survey work to the east of Elmina. The international team that she brought together was drawn from Denmark, Canada, Poland, Australia and the United States. She was leading this project when she was accidentally electrocuted by a computer cable. She leaves behind her husband, Alphonso Magri, and a list of publications that sadly mark the beginning and end of a promising career.

Christopher R. DeCorse

Syracuse University, United States of America

[email protected]