Abstract:
While terrestrial archaeology has engaged with contemporary philosophy, maritime archaeology has remained in comparative disciplinary – or subdisciplinary – isolation. However, the issues that humans face in the Anthropocene – from global warming to global pandemics – call for transdisciplinary cooperation, and for thinking together beyond the confines of the human-centered philosophical tradition. Growing areas such as the “blue humanities” and “oceanic thinking” draw directly on our maritime past, even as they ponder the future. Theoretically engaged maritime archaeologists could contribute significantly to these areas of thought, as this volume demonstrates. The essays collected here serve as a jumping off point, which opens new ways for maritime archaeologists to engage with the most important problems of our time and to benefit from the new insights offered by object-oriented and flat ontologies. The book gathers the analytical thinking of archaeologists, philosophers, marine biologists, and media theorists, and pushes those observations deep into the maritime realm.
The contributions then branch out, like tentacles or corals, reaching into the lessons of oil spills, cephalopod hideouts, shipwreck literature, ruined monuments, and beached plastics. The volume concludes with a series of critical responses to these papers, which pushes the dialogue into new areas of inquiry. Taken as a whole, the volume emphasizes that the study of the past is more relevant than ever because serious consideration of our transtemporal watery world and all its inhabitants is increasingly necessary for our collective survival. This volume takes the first steps toward this reckoning and, as such, it promises to be an important new contribution to lecture and conference halls around the world where oceans and the Anthropocene are under study.
Contents
Prelude: A History of Maritime Archaeological Thought
Peter B. Campbell
Collapse, Cataclysm, and Eruption: Alien Archaeologies for the Anthropocene
Sara A. Rich and Peter B. Campbell
The Shipwreck of Theseus: Philosophy and Maritime Archaeology
Graham Harman
What Gets Washed Up on the Beach: Shipwreck, Literary Culture, and Objects of Interpretation
Steve Mentz
Where Land Flows into Sea: An Anthropocene Section
Matt Edgeworth
Maritime Christening: Anthropomorphism and the Engender(bend)ing of Metaphor
Jeremy Killian and Sara A. Rich
Complicit Objects and New Materialist Praxis
Claire S. Watson
Assemblage Theory and the Mediative Practice of Ship Hull Reuse
Chelsea M. Cohen
“The Biggest Museum Gallery in the Whole World”: Virtual Excavation and the Musealization of the Seafloor
Lisa Yin Han
Naufragic Architecture in the Anthropocene
Sara A. Rich, Leila Hamdan, and Justyna Hampel
Octopodology and Dark Amphorae: The Persistence and Non-Human Afterlives of Objects in the Sea
Peter B. Campbell
Water as a Hyperfact (reprint)
Johan Normark
Drift (reprint)
Þóra Pétursdóttir
Contemporary Philosophies for Maritime Archaeology – A Response
Joe Flatman
OOO, Archaeology, and the Anthropocene: Comments on Maritime Archaeology and Anthropocene Philosophy
Christopher Witmore
Compelled by Things: A Response to Contemporary Philosophy for Maritime Archaeology
Matthew Harpster
Theory at Sea: Some Reflections from the Gunwale
Bjørnar J. Olsen
Conclusion: If on a Winter Night a Ship Wrecks
Peter B. Campbell
Dr
Sara A. Rich
Sara Rich is Assistant Professor of Honors at Coastal Carolina University. She is an archaeologist, art historian, artist, and author of speculative fiction. She has directed underwater archaeological campaigns on shipwrecks and submerged settlements in the Mediterranean, English Channel, and North Atlantic, and is now directing her attention to the West Atlantic.
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Dr
Peter B. Campbell
Peter B. Campbell is Lecturer in Cultural Heritage Under Threat at Cranfield University. He received his PhD in Archaeology from the Centre for Maritime Studies at the University of Southampton and MA in Maritime Studies from East Carolina University. He served as a research fellow at the British School at Rome from 2017-2018 and Assistant Director for Archaeology and Archaeological Science from 2018-2020.
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