Conference Agenda

The maritime cultural landscape is a multidisciplinary theoretical framework that incorporates various data in interpreting the historical relationships, interactions, and influences between humans and the sea. Traditionally, five key categories have been utilized in maritime cultural landscape studies: shipwrecks, land remains, traditions of use, natural havens, and place names. Each component contributes unique information and perspective on the development of maritime life, culture, and industries. Despite its seemingly obvious applicability, the maritime cultural landscape has not been widely employed in Caribbean Island studies. Many Caribbean islands today demonstrate the culmination of diverse historical influences on culture and society in which the maritime component is sometimes so deeply ingrained that it may be overlooked. This paper will present a maritime cultural landscape for the island of St. Croix, USVI, which has shown potential to significantly impact our understanding of the region as well as the uses and flaws of this framework.

After their invention during the twentieth century, fiberglass boats grew in popularity due to their quick and long-lasting construction method. Through time, these vessels have littered coastlines after natural disasters, leaving them derelict for years, resulting in boat graveyards. While these graveyards impede the environment and boat traffic, they also represent past community activity. The significance of these forgotten boats demonstrates itself through local heritage, policy regulation, and transformation of the cultural landscape. Boat graveyards impact many locations, including the Florida Panhandle, as it regularly suffers from hurricanes and tropical storms. This research focuses on data collection and site interpretation of abandoned modern watercraft past their prime and soon to be part of the historical record.

In June 2024, the ECU Program in Maritime Studies led a collaborative field school with the North Carolina Underwater Archaeology Branch at Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson State Historic Site. This project sought to document features identified during a geophysical survey of the historic waterfront along the Lower Cape Fear River in 2021. The southern section of the historic site was focused upon since potential erosion of the overburden marsh in this area was impacting identified features. As natural (sea-level rise) and cultural (boat-generated wave action) variables actively break away the existing marsh, once buried features are now exposed to accelerated deterioration, leading to an observable loss of archaeological data. This study will outline the documented changes to the shoreline and discuss the Phase I results of the 2024 field school. These results will serve as baseline information to mitigate future erosion impacts on the significant 18th and 19th century waterfront sites.

Lighthouses have been a key federal responsibility on the American shoreline since 1789. Their assistance to sailors and beach-goers has been well documented. While there is newer technology with lifesaving services during wreck events, many lighthouses still continue to stand as functional historic landmarks today. As a key component of the maritime cultural landscape, lighthouses may provide archaeologists help in determining the location of wrecking events in and near coastal harbors. This paper presents geospatial data, a probability model, and a lighthouse classification system to explore the spatial relationships between the American lighthouse and any nearby shipwreck site formations. The examination of spatial relationships between these navigational aids and the coastline can assist archaeologists in identifying potential shipwreck sites and to better understand the formation processes of these maritime cultural landscapes.

Beach erosion and replenishment, inlet dredging, coastal development, and severe storms amplified by climate change and sea level rise have endangered known shipwrecks sites. These coastal processes, man-made or natural, are contributing factors to changing environmental conditions at various historic shipwreck sites. This presentation aims to discuss an example of the changing coastal landscape and its effects on 18th and 19th century shipwrecks in New Jersey. Geophysical surveys, archival research, and oral histories can provide crucial insight into the condition and position of these shipwrecks over time. Using remote sensing technology, archaeologists can record site conditions and the changing coastal environments that underscores the dynamic nature of maritime archaeology and the ongoing need for adaptive conservation and surveying strategies so that proper assessments can be made.

A tenet of the maritime cultural landscape is that however expansively it is applied, its starting point is maritime culture. The maritime cultural landscapes of European coloniality were, however, enmeshed in greater taskscapes spanning media and species. An essentialized “maritimity” continues prioritizing this land-water binary even as archaeologists actively complicate and connect maritime archaeological work to broader anthropological discussions. This project interrogates regional American ship construction and breaking in the 17^th-19^th centuries as part of larger Euro-American colonial projects exercising power over the natural and anthropogenic. These analyses necessitate a theoretical framework for an amphibious archaeology that moves freely between land, water, and the interstitial spaces from which empires rose. Looking at Chesapeake Bay shipbuilding as a part of the region’s agroforestry taskscape using an aggregate of excavation, palynological, and archival data, this paper pushes for a shift from a binary land-water perspective to an amphibious analysis of watery archaeology.