Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology

The Maritime Archaeology Trust (formerly the Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology) is a charitable trust that researches and excavates maritime archaeology and heritage in Great Britain. Historically, their core activities were focused around Hampshire, the Isle of Wight and the Solent, but now they work in other parts of the country and on international projects.

The discovery of the wreck of HMS Pomone at The Needles in 1969 led the Isle of Wight Council to fund and organise a team to research and excavate the site. As more wrecks were discovered in the following decades, the Isle of Wight Maritime Heritage Project was formed. The project originally focused on the Yarmouth Roads Protected Wreck Site but also began to identify Mesolithic sites on the seabed of the Solent. When central government funds were withdrawn, the project was re-organised as the Isle of Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology in 1990. The Trust managed the excavation of several sites and became the licensee for many of them. In 1991, with support from Hampshire County Council, the Trust's scope expanded and it became the Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology. In 2013, it became the Maritime Archaeology Trust.

The charity has since investigated a great deal of maritime archaeology around the Solent, including shipwrecks, submerged landscapes and inter-tidal foreshore sites. They have also conducted projects as far away as Gibraltar and the Farasan Islands.

In 1999 divers from the Trust discovered the Mesolithic settlement site of Bouldnor Cliff. The site is offshore of Bouldnor on the Isle of Wight and about 11 metres below the surface of the Solent. Attention was first drawn to the site when divers observed a lobster discarding worked flint tools from its burrow. Since then, regular fieldwork has revealed that Bouldnor was almost certainly a settlement site approximately 8,000 years ago (6,000 BC), at a time when lower sea levels meant that the Solent was an extensive river valley. Work done so far has revealed that the technology of Mesolithic settlers was probably 2,000 years ahead of what had previously been believed.