In 2006 I started my archaeology degree as well as my diving career with particular emphasis on Maritime Archaeology, encouraged by the first Nautical Archaeology Society (NAS) course given in Mexico.

From 2006 to 2011 I studied my BA in Archaeology at the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH) in Mexico City. In this same period the Archaeological Survey Lab of Institute for Anthropological Research based at the National University of Mexico (IIA-UNAM) allowed me to join them. I have been fortunate enough to participate in several international projects in Mexico, Spain, Israel and the UK, some of them in collaboration with different universities from US, Italy, Chile, Argentina, Colombia and the previously mentioned countries.

From 2011 to 2012, I was a field officer in the excavation of the port city of Magdala, located in the Sea of Galilee in Israel.

In 2013, the National Committee for Science and Technology (CONACYT) granted me a scholarship in Mexico, enabling me to pursue the MA programme at the University of Southampton, joining the Centre for Maritime Archaeology (CMA).

My research during the MA was focused on the site formation processes of the HMS Invincible shipwreck located in the east Solent, UK, using combined historical, archaeological and environmental data from the National Oceanography Centre (NOC). During this time Pascoe Archaeological Services (PAS) and MSDM Marine have allowed me to carry out commercial work as a diving tender in England, Wales and Scotland.

Currently my PhD research project deals with maritime landscapes of the main ports of Mexico. Considering that landscape in archaeology continues to play a pivotal role in seaports today, little is understood on how this develops.

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CMA masters students spent most of the long bank holiday weekend at Buckler’s Hard in the New Forest learning ancient boat and ship building skills.

The backdrop of the River Beaulieu, the intermittent sunshine and occasional ice cream belie the serious labour (both physical and intellectual) involved in learning to work with adzes and axes. Using a range of replica tools students worked with chunks of oak to recreate boat building technologies from the Bronze Age to the Post Medieval period.

This kind of experimental archaeology offers a unique pedagogical experience. It allows students to engage with the physical labour and bodily practices involved in boat building, as well as the tools, techniques and environment. They experience at first hand the time, co-operation and materials involved and the types of choices engaged in choosing timber and in moving and shaping those timbers collaboratively. Hopefully, they also gain an inkling of the embodied skills and knowledge involved in working with the tools and the wood. When it’s going well an axe moves as an extension of the body, connecting head, hand and timber, and producing a beautiful hollow, rhythmical sound – but it takes a remarkable breadth and depth of knowledge to see boat frames in tree trunks, work with and accommodate knots and imperfections, and to sculpt parts of a boat out of massive pieces of oak.

Shaping timbers with an adze

For researchers this kind of experimental archaeology remains a valuable tool in efforts to better understand seafaring and maritime communities in the past. In replicating something of the experience of ancient boat building, it can open up our ideas about the connections between timber, tools, labour and the social world within which that building took place, as well as offering a unique opportunity to test out our ideas about how ancient boats were constructed, crewed and used. The recent Bronze Age Dover Boat reconstruction is a prime example of this kind of work.

This weekend’s course was also an opportunity for Jon Adams to do some filming for the maritime archaeology MOOC (Massively Open Online Course) we are developing at the CMA. There will be more news on that in the next few months, with – we hope – the first course going live in the autumn.

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