Down by the Water: Interdisciplinary Studies in Human-Environment Interactions in Watery Spaces

Description

Waterways have been key factors in the development of societies from prehistoric times, particularly due to their role as vectors for cultural interactions, material exchange, and transmission of knowledge. The fluidity of these highways of transport and communications is tightly linked to the presence of transit points: spaces with unique geographical characteristics that acted as nodal points between different communities. Transit points are thus defined as places of intense social contacts, putting objects of physical geography into the domain of social sciences and humanities.The subject is challenging, as activities that happen in aquatic spaces seldom leave substantial archaeological traces behind. Nevertheless, by focusing on the intersection between humans and their environment down by the water, this book demonstrates what can be achieved by changing the research paradigm to one that fully embraces the nuances of the aquatic world, and especially the intricate connection between society and waterscapes. Front Cover Title Page Copyright Cultural Studies in Maritime and Underwater Archaeology Titles in the Cultural Studies in Maritime and Underwater Archaeology Series Of Related Interest Acknowledgements Contents Contributor Biographies 1. An Exploration of “Down by the Water” As a Conceptual Framework of Place Part 1: Water as a Place of Encounter and Movement 2. Releasing Temple Gold: Spatial Fix in Medieval Saurashtra through Water Epigraphy 3. Historical Resilience of a Local Socio-Ecological System of Shan Shan Kingdom 4. Frozen in Time – Iconography, Visual Analysis, and the Study of Nautical Activities in Maritime Archaeology 5. Where the Ganga Meets the Sea: Coastal Archaeology and the Fluvial Network of Bengal 6. Raetic Epigraphic Documents as Landmarks of Waterway Transit in the Eastern Alps Part 2: Water as a Liminal Place of Human-Nature Entanglements 7. Early Harbour Structures in the Eastern Mediterranean from the Fifteenth to the Sixth centuries BCE 8. Molecular Archaeoparasitology – a Worms Eye View of the Past Part 3: Water as a Mental Landscape 9. Submerged Lands, Navigable Waters, and Jurisdiction as a Technology of Spatial Governance in the United States 10. River as an Anchor of Nivkh Language Ecology 11. History, Re-creation, and Change: Water in Ancient Mesoamerican Thought Part 4: Production and Distribution Down by the Water 12. Examining the Versatile Ceramic Repertoire at Islamic Ayla/Aqaba, ‘The Port of Palestine’ on the Red Sea, via Geochemistry 13. Shipwright in History: Trade and Heritage Coda 14. “Down by the Water” Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries Back Cover