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Archaeology, Page 4

Toward an Archaeology of Boarding: Naval Hand-to-Hand Combat Tactics in Northwestern Europe in the 16th Century

In this blog post, maritime archaeologist Rolf W. Fabricius explores the forgotten side of naval combat: hand-to-hand boarding action.  Much research has been undertaken over the years to illuminate the use of naval power in European warfare in the past (e.g. Corbett 1905; Paviot 1997; Dickie et al. 2009; Nelson 2001; Rose 2002; Grant 2008; Hildred 2011); yet, there has been surprisingly little written on the subject of naval boarding and hand-to-hand fighting tactics at sea in general. Continue reading →

Ports and harbours

A port, a harbour or an anchorage place? Essentially a place to safely moor your boat or ship. These critical points of contact and exchange, interfaces between different cultures, located between land and sea, have been relatively little studied by archaeologists in the past, until recently. Seminal works on harbours were published by Blackman in 1982 in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. Continue reading →

T – 24 hours

After a lot of hard work by a huge number of people the Shipwrecks and Submerged Worlds course goes live tomorrow.  I and my colleagues have been spending the weekend reading through the different elements trying to iron out any minor issues, all the while thinking about how it will be received.  At points while we were putting this together it felt like we'd taken on an impossible challenge. Continue reading →

Starting the Dialogue between Archaeologist and Boat Builder

One of the things we are concerned with as maritime archaeologists is how ships were designed and constructed. Even though ships are objects that are interesting to investigate from a technological point of view, they can also inform us about some less obvious aspects of the past. For example, by examining shipwrecks from the Roman period, we can learn about the design and construction procedures the Romans used to build their ship which have been lost today. Continue reading →

UNITWIN Network for Underwater Archaeology

The UNITWIN Network (University Twinning and Networking Programme) for Underwater Archaeology was established in 2012. It aims to increase capacity in the participating countries through international cooperation. In accordance with the UNESCO 2001 Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, it aims to enhance the protection of, and research into, underwater cultural heritage. Continue reading →

Have you found any gold yet? Misconceptions in Maritime Archaeology

Any field of work attracts misconceptions, but the romance and mystery of maritime archaeology provides the perfect bed for a wide range of assumptions about what maritime archaeology covers, what we can learn through the material record and how we go about making discoveries. What we aren’t Maritime archaeology is the study of people’s changing relationship with the sea and connected waterways through material they left behind. Continue reading →

The Atlantic Wall: Contemporary Maritime Archaeology

  Guernsey © Stephan Vanfleteren Maritime archaeology; the study of the material culture that can inform us about the ways in which peoples in the past engaged with and were impacted by the seas and other waterbodies (Author’s definition). Is the Atlantic Wall maritime archaeology? In his introduction to his magnificent new photobook ‘Atlantic Wall‘, Stephan Vanlfeteren certainly seems to think so. Continue reading →