Lynn Harris (Ed.): Sea Ports and Sea Power: African Maritime Cultural Landscapes

It is not an easy task to combine the vast maritime history of Africa into a SpringerBrief (short treatments of new research and applications) on underwater archaeology. The short length of the book applies a major constraint on thematic and regional coverage, which perhaps should have been addressed through concentration on a narrower topic or geographical area. As it stands, the geographical range is not as diverse as it should be for the scope of the series or a title alluding to the African continent, with five of the nine papers being on southern Africa (and four of those about to the Cape), while North Africa is not mentioned. Chronologically, only one paper considers the precolonial period, while the underwater archaeology theme of the book series is also underplayed. The editor of this volume, Lynn Harris, has approached this broad field by bringing together a selection of authors under a title that could be at least two separate topics and perhaps two different...