Maritime and Coastal Archaeology

Maritime and coastal archaeology examines the physical traces of human life along shorelines and beneath the sea, from submerged prehistoric landscapes to ancient harbours and shipwrecks. In the Mediterranean, where sea levels have shifted dramatically over the Holocene, many of the places where early people lived, traded, and built ports now lie underwater or buried beneath coastal sediment, making geoarchaeological methods essential for locating and interpreting them. Researchers are actively working to understand how communities adapted to changing coastlines over millennia, and to reconstruct the maritime networks that connected ancient societies across the basin. A central challenge remains distinguishing natural coastal evolution from human modification of the landscape, and determining how much of the underwater cultural heritage can be documented before it is lost to erosion, development, or neglect.

Works

226,285

Total citations

389,711

Keywords

MediterraneanMaritime ArchaeologySea-Level ChangeAncient HarboursUnderwater Cultural HeritageGeoarchaeology