Abstract
Nautical archaeology frequently shies away from theory in favor of praxis, a tendency that has been criticized as hindering the development of a middle-aged archaeological discipline. This paper applies a recent philosophical movement, object-oriented ontology, to the study of ships and shipwrecks in order to address commonly encountered, and overlapping, issues of mereology, identity, origins, and representation. It takes as its example the Yarmouth Roads Protected Shipwreck, of presumed Spanish origin wrecked in English waters, to exemplify how an embracement of the paradoxes intrinsic to shipwrecks as objects (collections and souvenirs) can result in new ways of representing and relating to them.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Bryant (2010): Blog: Larval Subjects: https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2010/05/01/three-strange-mereologies/
References
Adams J (2013) Experiencing shipwrecks and the primacy of vision. In: Adams J, Rönnby J (eds) Interpreting shipwrecks. Maritime archaeological approaches. Highfield Press, Southampton, pp 85–97
Adams J, Rönnby J (2013) Landscapes, seascapes, shipscapes. In: Adams J, Rönnby J (eds) Interpreting shipwrecks. Maritime archaeological approaches. Highfield Press, Southampton, pp 1–8
Ahlström C (1997) Looking for leads: shipwrecks of the past revealed by contemporary documents and the archaeological record. The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, Helsinki
Alaimo S (2013) Violet-Black. In: Cohen JJ (ed) Prismatic ecology. Ecotheory behind the green. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, pp 233–251
Alberti B, Fowles S, Holbraad M et al (2011) Worlds otherwise. Archaeology, anthropology, and ontological difference. Curr Anthropol 52:896–912
Baudrillard J (2005) The system of objects, Benedict. Verso Books, London and New York
Blackmore J (2002) Manifest perdition. Shipwreck narrative and the disruption of empire. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London
Bogost I (2012) Alien phenomenology, or what it’s like to be a thing. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
Bryant LR (2011) The democracy of objects. Open Humanities Press, Ann Arbor
Castro F (2008) In search of unique Iberian ship design concepts. Hist Archaeol 42:63–87
Cohen JJ (2015) The sea is a conveyance machine. In: Mentz S (ed) Oceanic. Punctum Books, Brooklyn, pp 131–141
Cole A (2013) The call of things: a critique of object-oriented ontologies. Minnesota Rev 80:106–118
Cole A (2015) Those obscure objects of desire. The uses and abuses of object-oriented ontology and speculative realism. Artforum:318–323
De Landa M (2002) Intensive science and virtual philosophy. Continuum, London
Deleuze G, Guattari F (1998) A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London
Derrida J (1994) Specters of Marx: the state of the debt, the work of mourning, and the new international. Routledge, New York
Dolwick JS (2008) In search of the social. Steamboats, square wheels, reindeer and other things. J Marit Archaeol 3:15–41. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11457-008-9027-9
Dolwick JS (2009) “The social” and beyond. Introducing actor-network theory. J Marit Archaeol 4:21–49. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11457-009-9044-3
Dunkley M (2001) The Yarmouth Roads shipwreck. A study in interpretation. Master’s thesis. University of Southampton, Southampton
Fahlander F (2012) Are we there yet? Archaeology and the postmodern in the new millennium. Curr Swedish Archaeol 20:109–129
Fenwick V, Gale AG (1998) Historic shipwrecks: discovered, protected & investigated. Tempus Publishing, Gloucestershire
Harman G (2010) Towards a speculative realism. Zero Books, Winchester
Harman G (2011) The quadruple object. Zero Books, Winchester
Harpster M (2013) Shipwreck identity, methodology, and nautical archaeology. J Archaeol Method Theory 20:588–622. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-012-9131-x
Harris AF (2014) Hewn. In: Inhuman nature. Oliphaunt Books, Washington, DC, pp 17–37
Hocker F (2013) Details remembered. Interpreting the human component in shipbuilding. In: Interpreting shipwrecks. Maritime archaeological approaches. Highfield Press, Southampton, pp 72–84
Ingold T (2007) Materials against materiality. Archaeol Dialogues 14:1–16. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203807002127
Jackson R (2011) The anxiousness of objects and artworks: Michael fried, object oriented ontology and aesthetic absorption. Speculations:135–168
Law J (1986) On the methods of long distance control: vessels, navigation, and the Portuguese route to India. In: Power, action and belief: a new sociology of knowledge?, Sociologic. Routledge, Henley, pp 234–263
Lucas G (2005) The archaeology of time. Routledge, London
Malafouris L, Renfrew C (2010) The cognitive life of things. Archaeology, material engagement and the extended mind. In: Malafouris L, Renfrew C (eds) The cognitive life of things. Recasting the boundaries of the mind. Macdonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge, pp 234–263
Marder M (2013) Plant-thinking. A philosophy of vegetal life. Columbia University Press, New York City
Mentz S (2014) Shipwreck. In: Cohen JJ (ed) Inhuman nature. Oliphaunt Books, Washington, DC, pp 1–15
Morton T (2013) Realist magic: objects, ontology, causality. Open Humanities Press, Ann Arbor
Muckelroy K (1978) Maritime archaeology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Normark J (2014) Water as a hyperfact. Curr Swedish Archaeol 22:183–206
Oertling T (1998) The concept of the Atlantic vessel. In: Alves F (ed) Proceedings of the international symposium on archaeology of medieval and modern ships of Iberian-Atlantic tradition. Instituto Português Archaeologia; Centro Nacional de Arqueologia Náutica e Subaquática, Academia de Marinha Lisboa, Lisbon, pp 233–240
Olsen B, Shanks M, Webmoor T, Witmore C (2012) Archaeology: the discipline of things. University of California Press, Berkeley
Pétursdóttir Þ (2013) Concrete matters towards an archaeology of things. Doctoral dissertation. University of Tromsø, Faculty of Humanities, Tromsø
Plets RMK, Dix JK, Best AI (2008) Mapping of the buried Yarmouth Roads Wreck, Isle of Wight, UK, using a chirp sub-bottom profiler. Int J Naut Archaeol 37:360–373. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1095-9270.2007.00176.x
Rich SA (2017) Cedar forests, cedar ships: allure, lore, and metaphor in the Mediterranean Near East. Archaeopress, Oxford
Rich SA (2021) Shipwreck hauntography: underwater ruins and the uncanny. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam
Rich S, Crespo Solana A, Momber G, Nayling N (2018) Shipwrecks and provenance in-situ timber sampling protocols with a focus on wrecks of the Iberian shipbuilding tradition. Archaeopress, Oxford
Siewers AK (2014) Trees. In: Cohen JJ (ed) Inhuman nature. Oliphaunt Books, Washington, DC, pp 101–113
Smith J (2014) Fluid. In: Cohen JJ (ed) Inhuman nature. Oliphaunt Books, Washington, DC, pp 114–131
Steinberg P, Kimberley P (2015) Wet ontologies, fluid spaces. Giving depth to volume through oceanic thinking. Environ Plan D Soc Space 33:247–264. https://doi.org/10.1068/d14148p
Stewart S (1984) On longing: narratives of the miniature, the gigantic, the souvenir, the collection. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London
Törnqvist O (2013) The skeleton in the dune. Unlocking the explanatory potential of shipwrecks through physical landscape studies. In: Adams J, Rönnby J (eds) Interpreting shipwrecks: maritime archaeological approaches. Highfield Press, Southampton, pp 25–35
Van De, Noort R (2011) North Sea archaeologies: a maritime biography, 10,000 BC - AD 1500. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Watson K, Gale A (1990) Site evaluation for marine sites and monuments records: the Yarmouth Roads Wreck investigations. Int J Naut Archaeol 19:183–192. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1095-9270.1990.tb00256.x
Webmoor T, Witmore CL (2008) Things are us! A commentary on human/things relations under the banner of a ‘social’ archaeology. Nor Archaeol Rev 41:53–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/00293650701698423
Acknowledgments
This research was generously supported by ForSEAdiscovery: Marie Curie Actions Programme PITN-2013-GA607545; however, the ideas and opinions expressed herein are the author’s only and do not necessarily reflect those of the program or its coordinators, or the editors of this volume. Likewise, errors and oversights are the fault solely of the author. The author thanks ForSEAdiscovery coordinators, partners, and fellows, and the paper’s anonymous peer reviewers, for engaging in conversation with the ideas presented here. A draft of this research was first presented at the 21st Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists in Glasgow, September 3, 2015, under the title, “Nautical Archaeology and the Hermeneutics of the Anti-Social,” and the author would like to extend gratitude to the conference organizers, and to the speakers and audience members of the Maritime Mobility session for their valued insights.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rich, S.A. (2022). Hauntography of an Ordinary Shipwreck: Paradox, Appellation, Provenance, Apparition. In: Crespo Solana, A., Castro, F., Nayling, N. (eds) Heritage and the Sea. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86464-4_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86464-4_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-86463-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-86464-4
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)