Contemporary Philosophy for Maritime Archaeology

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