| Summary: | In the 1960s, commercial treasure salvors of 1715 Spanish Plate Fleet shipwrecks off the east coast of Florida encountered prehistoric artifacts and extinct animal fossils. At first the salvors believed the material to be wreck-related, but later examination by archeologists indicated it was not associated with the wreck. In 1976 Florida archeologists considered the possibility that the shipwreck might lie over an inundated terrestrial site. In 1978 fieldwork was conducted to determine the nature of the terrestrial site and the site-formation processes that allowed its preservation. Although the fieldwork was done within the confines of commercial treasure salvage,sufficient controls were exercised to make some observations regarding the site-formation processes of both sites. The results of the research are discussed here, focusing on the terrestrial site and its relevance to understanding processes of inundation and preservation, and extrapolating to locate other continental shelf sites, The report conclusions present two newly derived principles of site formation processes relevant to historical and marineinundated terrestrial sites.
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