We are hoping to run Shipwrecks and Submerged Worlds again at the end of January 2017, but in the meantime these are some of the MOOCs that might be of interest to you:

Archaeology

• Archaeology of Portus: Exploring the lost harbour of Ancient Rome. (University of Southampton).
• Fundamentals of GIS.
• The European discovery of China.
• Archaeology: From dig to lab and beyond.
• Hadrian’s Wall: Life on the Roman frontier.
• Homo Floresiensis uncovered: the science of ‘the Hobbit’.
• Superpowers of the Ancient World: the Near East.
• Antiquities trafficking and art crime.
• Cultural heritage, social innovation and new citizenship.
• Recovering humankind’s past and saving the universal heritage
• Roman Art and Archaeology
• The Mediterranean, a space of exchange (from the Renaissance to Enlightenment).

History

• Greek and Roman Mythology.

Marine science

• Exploring our oceans. (University of Southampton)
• Marine Life 101.
• Sharks! Global biodiversity, biology and conservation.
• Tropical Coastal Ecosystems.
• Marine and antarctic science.

Environmental issues

• Causes of climate change.
• Coasts and Communities.
• Our Earth’s Future.
• The Dynamic Earth.
• Sensing planet earth – water and ice.
• Introduction to water and climate.
• Climate change.
• Contemporary issues in ocean governance.
• Water in a thirsty world.
• Climate justice: lessons from the global south.

Providers of MOOCs

What’s on offer changes all the time, so here are the main providers that you might want to explore.

• FutureLearn.
• Blackboard Coursesites.
• Canvas network.
• Coursera.
• EdX.
• EMMA.
• Iversity.
• Novoed.
• Open2Study.
• Openlearning.
• Stanford Online.
• Udacity.

Are there any free online courses that you can recommend to others? Have you tried any of the courses listed above? Which ones did you enjoy? Are there any you disliked?

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In this short video, Crystal discusses the importance of preserving maritime traditions.

Do you agree with Crystal?

Further information on the preservation of maritime traditions

If you are interested in maritime traditions, you might want to visit Traditional Maritime Skills. This is the website of the Traditional Maritime Skills project. The aim of this EU project is to record wooden boatbuilding skills. These skills are in danger of disappearing as masters of the trade retire.

The £1m international scheme is part of a partnership between Cornwall, the Netherlands and Belgium. Skills will be recorded in boatyards across these regions. These skills will then form part of readily-available online training packages. This archive will help ensure a steady workforce of multi-skilled boatbuilders. It will also support regions whose economies have traditionally been entwined with their maritime heritage.

In Week 4 of our course, Dr Jesse Ransley explains why maritime archaeologists have become increasingly interested in working with boat builders and studying traditional maritime skills.

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As part of ongoing research at the Centre for Maritime Archaeology Research Group (CMARG) on public perception of maritime heritage, we hope that you might take ten minutes or so to complete the following survey: 10 minute pre-course survey on maritime heritage.

This information helps the MOOC team better understand how to improve the course and tailor both it and blog posts to your interests.  As well, it helps several doctoral students better understand how people around the world relate to the sea and their maritime heritage.  Your participation is much appreciated!

Here is that link again: 10 minute pre-course survey on maritime heritage

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On account of the diversity of rituals one encounters through the archaeological, iconographic or textual record, it becomes clear that a boat or ship occupied an important role in various rituals reaching far back in the history of Scandinavia. Their prevalent occurrence suggests their deep-rooted connection to the spiritual sphere of humans and their general acceptance in socio-cultural systems – even if their levels of meaning might have varied in time and space. Images of boats have played a central role in the material culture from the early Prehistory onwards and appeared in form of carvings on rocks especially close to the coast, on wooden coffins or on decorated bronze razors in context with mortuary rituals.

During prehistoric and medieval times in Scandinavia the boat was an indispensable object in everyday life. Therefore, it was commonly accepted as a sign and occurred in the spiritual culture as a manifestation of something.

A boat out of its original techno-utilitarian function as a transporting vessel with its implied economical and social amplifications is a symbol with great multivocality. Actual boats or parts of them can be present in burial rituals; the presence of a boat can also be simulated by boat-shaped stone settings on a grave or in form of carved or drawn boats on stelae or tombstones.

Although not being considered as a continuous tradition, Scandinavian boat-graves appear from the Stone Age to the Medieval Period. They greatly vary in their occurrence, their contextual circumstances, and their symbolic connotations. Cremation burials in or with a boat occurred in South and East Scandinavia, Southeast Finland and West Norway, inhumation graves with boats or their parts were found in Denmark, Central Sweden and on the coasts of Norway.

Burials with whole boats, parts of them or with just a respectable amount of rivets and nails as an indicator of a boat are most widespread during the Viking Age (c. 800-1050) and appear rather in areas close to the coast. They are not gender specific given that female boat graves can be found in Tune and Norsa in Västmanland, Sweden (Here should be noted that a lot of associations with boat graves are solely based on the finds of numerous clenched nails or rivets in the burial).

Shapes and types of boat graves can quite vary, as well as their interpretations and associated levels of meaning. Boats or ships in burials can also simply function as a repository of the body or grave goods or as an emblematic element of the funerary ritual. A strong cultic or ritualistic significance in regard to human and animalistic sacrifices at for instance Gokstad, Oseberg, Slusegaard and Ladby is undeniable, however, also small boats with no obvious value were used as coffins in other societies.

Approximately 1400 graves, both inhumation and cremation graves, were discovered at the Danish cemetery of Slusegaard. 43 graves contained either a whole boat, half a boat or parts of a boat together with the dead, however, there is a high probability of yet undiscovered or previously not recognised boat graves. The burials were mostly located in sand, where their features could still be recognised in its colouring due to former treatment of the boat with tar or resin. The boats themselves were slender, expanded log boats and probably mainly used for fishing and navigation along the coast.

The boats were usually turned upside down to cover the deceased and it seems likely that they could have functioned as some sort of coffin or container. The 43 boats graves displayed an equal distribution among male and female burials. No children were found, although approximately 1/3 of the whole cemetery was occupied by children graves. The cemetery was in use from the 1^st to the 4^th century AD. By means of local pottery, which was used as a common grave good at Slusegaard, the main group of boat graves was dated between 80 and 160 AD with the remaining up to 250 AD. None of them, however, date to the beginning or to the end period of the cemetery. Certain grave goods in boat graves and the occurrence of double graves with obvious human sacrifice indicate some sort of cult activity, a fertility cult most likely, in Slusegaard.

The 21m long warship of Ladby contained next to various weapons and animal offerings also human sacrifices. This particular factor led to an interpretation focused on the probable high status of the deceased and his leading role as part of a military caste in society. References have been made to the Arabian diplomat Ahmed Ibn Fadlan. In his written record from the 10^th century AD, he describes his journey to the “Rus” people, which have been identified with Scandinavian Vikings. He gives a detailed report on a witnessed funeral of a chieftain, which included a decorated boat, sacrifices in form of food, animals and a slave girl and their subsequent cremation.

During the Viking-Age in Scandinavia very different burial rites were performed which implies that the conception of the afterlife was not uniformly adopted and expressed, maybe based on regional or even ethnic idioms.

It can be generally stated that boats were used as a symbolic element in Scandinavian graves to a greater or lesser extent continuously from the 1^st to the 11^th century AD, however, not by everyone, not necessarily in all of Scandinavia and definitely in various forms. The usage of a boat or their parts in a funerary context was not standard practice; it was rather executed by a small selection of society.

Different meanings or symbolic functions have been assigned to them. On one hand they were thought to be a representative symbol for the journey to the world of the dead, on the other hand they were considered as an expression of peoples connected to the sea in a social, economic or ideological sense.

Bibliography:

• Adams, J. (2000) Ships and boats as archaeological source material, World Archaeology, 32(3): 292-310
• Bonde, N., Christensen, A. E. (1993) Dendrochronological dating of the Viking Age ship burials at Oseberg, Gokstad and Tune, Norway. Antiquity 67: 575-583
• Crumlin-Pedersen, O. (1995) Boat-burials at Slusegaard and the Interpretation of the Boat-grave custom IN: Crumlin-Pedersen, O., Thye, B. M. (eds.) The Ship as a symbol in Prehistoric and Medieval Scandinavia, Copenhagen: The National Museum, Centre for Maritime Archaeology, Roskilde, 87-100
• Ingstad, A. S. (1995) The nterpretation of the Oseberg-find IN: Crumlin-Pedersen, O., Thye, B. M. (eds.) The Ship as a symbol in Prehistoric and Medieval Scandinavia, Copenhagen: The National Museum, Centre for Maritime Archaeology, Roskilde, 139-147
• Kobylinski, Z. (1995) Ships, Society, Symbols and Archaeologists In: Crumlin-Pedersen, O., Thye, B. M., The Ship as a symbol in Prehistoric and Medieval Scandinavia, Copenhagen: The National Museum, Centre for Maritime Archaeology, Roskilde, 9-19
• Müller-Wille, M. (1995) Boat graves, old and new views IN: Crumlin-Pedersen, O., Thye, B. M. (eds.) The Ship as a symbol in Prehistoric and Medieval Scandinavia, Copenhagen: The National Museum, Centre for Maritime Archaeology, Roskilde, 101-109
• Müller-Wille, M. (1974) Boat-graves in northern Europe, The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology and Underwater Exploration 3(2): 187-204
• Wamers, E. (1995) The Symbolic Significance of the Ship-graves at Haiðaby and Ladby IN: Crumlin-Pedersen, O., Thye, B. M. (eds.) The Ship as a symbol in Prehistoric and Medieval Scandinavia, Copenhagen: The National Museum, Centre for Maritime Archaeology, Roskilde, 148-159
• Warmind, M.L. (1995) Ibn Fadlan in the Context of his Age IN: Crumlin-Pedersen, O., Thye, B. M. (eds.) The Ship as a symbol in Prehistoric and Medieval Scandinavia, Copenhagen: The National Museum, Centre for Maritime Archaeology, Roskilde, 130-137

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It’s hard to conceive of the numerous ways in which our world has changed since 1978. We’ve seen the rise and fall of technologies (VHS tapes, audio cassettes) the transformation of global politics (the fall of the Berlin Wall) and the emergence of new ways of communicating via the web. Even within the relatively small field of maritime archaeology there have been dramatic advancements: new technologies (multibeam bathymetry, synthetic aperture sonar, Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs)) and new ideas about how to understand the past. These matched with a constant flow of exciting new discoveries have served to transform the subject. Yet, after all this change, we are still recommending to people on courses in the 21^st century that they read a book published in 1978, Maritime Archaeology by Keith Muckelroy … how can this be so?

Well, there are in fact numerous reasons. Most academic fields can point to texts that have stood the test of time, due to the fundamental issues addressed. This is certainly the case with Maritime Archaeology. Here we find careful consideration as to what Maritime Archaeology is, its scope and, perhaps most importantly, its potential. Muckelroy was writing at a time when there had already been significant progress in advancing archaeology under water. George Bass’s work at Cape Gelidonya had clearly demonstrated how meticulous excavation of submerged shipwrecks could revolutionise our understanding of key archaeological questions. There was even a burgeoning archaeological literature, across the globe, that pointed to a nascent discipline.

However, much of the work being carried out was seen to fall within very specific domains of knowledge (nautical archaeology, marine archaeology etc.) or related to what were thought to be exceptional sites. Muckelroy’s inspired step was to deliberately look more broadly, defining ‘Maritime Archaeology’ as:

“the scientific study of the material remains of man and his activities on the sea”
(1978, 4)

While today we’d certainly look to remove the gender bias from this definition, we can still pick out the breadth of its scope. For Muckelroy (indeed, as it had been for Bass and many others), maritime archaeology was about more than just shipwrecks. One of the important features of his book is that he makes this clear from the start, and then goes on to explain how bringing in the breadth of evidence for maritime activity in the past helps to create an improved understanding of history.

Again, there is impressive work in the detail. If you browse through the chapters of Maritime Archaeology you can learn about the scope of the discipline, issues with working underwater and the importance of studying ships and boats. Beyond this you can also see the importance of theory and scientific method to the study of the past, along with a consideration of the physical characteristics of sites. This is all wrapped up with an attempt to draw the different strands back together to move understanding forward, and (crucially) generate new questions.

It is for this last point that Maritime Archaeology remains a key text today. Muckelroy saw himself as writing at the very beginning of a new field of study. In the preface to the volume he thanks Margaret Rule and Professors Grahame Clark, George Bass, Ian Hodder, Glyn Daniel and Dr David Clarke, stating:

“I must express my gratitude to all the lecturers and supervisors … who were prepared to devote time and energy to my education, despite my addiction to a specialism of dubious respectability and uncertain validity”
(1978, ix)

However, through forcing people to think about the questions they could answer via maritime remains, and the need for an exacting approach to the past, Muckelroy ensured that Maritime Archaeology in the UK became both respectable and valued. He also ensured that some of the broader questions and ideas he touched on in the volume may never truly be answered.  This serves to push the discipline on, looking for improved techniques, datasets and ideas to help us resolve questions about the past.

Maritime Archaeology is thus not a new book, and nor do I agree with everything that is written in it (but, I don’t suppose Muckelroy would have wanted that to be the case). However, it does still have relevance, helping us to chart how far we have come, and how much further we need to go.

Finally, I realise this is a very Eurocentric point of view. One of the things that has been exciting all the team working on our new online course has been how views from across the world can be shared. As such, it’d be very interesting to hear what books have come to the fore in different regions.

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