Maria Jacobsen, Senior Archaeologist, is a Danish nautical archaeologist with more than fifteen years of field experience working on numerous terrestrial and underwater excavations in Europe, the Near East and the U.S. These projects have included the initial sonar survey of the French 17th-century ship of exploration la Belle, recently excavated in Texas, excavations of the world's oldest shipwreck discovered in Uluburun, Turkey. Jacobsen has also directed the excavations of a number of ancient tomb and cemetery sites. She is currently a Ph. D. candidate in the Nautical Archaeology Program at Texas A&M University. She comes to the Hunley Research Center and the College of Charleston after ten years with the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, an international non-profit organization, also affiliated with Texas A&M University.