Prelude: A History of maritime archaeological thought

Abstract

Before considering contemporary philosophy and maritime archaeology, it is worth reviewing the history of maritime archaeological thought. R. G. Collingwood, notable as the only professor of philosophy who was also a practicing archaeologist, argued “no historical problem should be studied without studying… the history of historical thought about it” (Collingwood, 1939, p. 132), which is the approach of Bruce Trigger’s A History of Archaeological Thought (2006, pp. 1–2). Trigger’s monumental study of archaeology’s intellectual trajectory provides a framework for understanding the broader field; however, it rarely touches on thought relating to archaeology under water, largely due to maritime archaeology being “theory agnostic” according to Matthew Harpster. Indeed, the relationship between maritime archaeology and theory, especially engagement with new philosophies, has been fraught. While archaeology and the related field of anthropology have significant cohorts of scholars who experiment and appraise new philosophical and theoretical approaches, contemporary maritime archaeology has been slow to do so. However, this has not always the case if we look at the pursuit of knowledge through underwater excavation, which has a history of over 250 projects from 1006 until the advent of modern maritime archaeology following the excavation of the Bronze Age shipwreck at Cape Gelidonya in 1960 (Campbell and Flemming, 2022). This chapter provides a short, non-comprehensive history of maritime archaeological thought which might – as Collingwood advocates – provide useful context for the rest of the volume.