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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In the last week I’ve spent an improbably large amount of time thinking about various philosophical conceptions of maritime space. This is due partly to Monday’s British Waters and Beyond: The cultural significance of the sea since 1800 at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol, and partly to my increasing obsession with sailing directions.

With our paper at the symposium on Monday and a final article out (we hope) next year, Hannah Cobb and I are coming to the end of a small philosophical adventure into maritime space.

Amid the recent material turn in the Humanities, the need to reconsider our understandings of seas and oceans has become apparent. Across the diverse philosophical conceptions deployed in disciplines from geography to law and literature, there’s a provocative tension growing between aesthetic and material imaginings of maritime space. Yet the former is proving increasingly problematic when we try to move beyond metaphor to material seas and oceans, and particularly when we want to address human habitation of watery worlds.

Hannah and I have been exploring what archaeology and anthropology can bring to this discussion. Using a little of what Jane Bennett termed, rather wonderfully, a ‘countercultural kind of perceiving’ (i.e. not anthropocentric, but attentive to things and their affects), we started with seascapes and moved quickly on to assemblages and material seas.

I’m not sure this exploration of material seas is quite over for me though, because I keep coming back to my Channel Pilot. It’s a huge volume published by the UKHO that offers sailing directions for the English Channel and its western approaches through a combination of text and charts. At 504 pages my 2005 edition is comprehensive – you couldn’t call it a handy guide. But for me it’s spellbinding because its dense bulk reflects perfectly the problem of trying to pin down the experience of sailing within a dynamic environment, where places (confluences, sandbanks and fishing grounds) shift with season, tide and weather.

Maritime geography is underpinned by real-world experience, a lived knowledge that is as much about intuiting and interpreting the world at that moment as it is about depth, current and tide. This experiential knowledge is gained through the bodily practices of wayfinding and navigation at sea and all the multisensory engagements – with currents, winds and weather and with instruments of measurement, the bodies of other sailors and the ship itself – involved in the tasks of seafaring in a weather-world.

Codifying these embodied understandings of maritime places and attempting to produce an externalised hydrography suitable for transmission via text, diagram and chart is therefore no small feat – and produces, perhaps inevitably, a hefty tome.

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