Big Data in Maritime Archaeology: Challenges and Prospects from the Middle East and North Africa

The Middle East and North Africa have witnessed a surfeit of geospatial data collection projects, resulting in big databases with powerful deductive capacities. Despite the valuable insights and expansive evidentiary record offered by those databases, emphasis on anthropogenic threats to cultural heritage, combined with a limited integration of local perspectives, have raised important questions on the ethical and epistemological dimensions of big data. This paper contextualizes maritime cultural heritage (MCH) in those debates through the lens of the Maritime Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa project (MarEA). MarEA is developing a unique for the region database for MCH designed to amalgamate a baseline record emphasizing spatial location, state of preservation, and vulnerability. This record will form a stepping stone toward finer-grained research on MCH and its interdisciplinary intersections. It is also developed as an information resource to facilitate local collaborators in prioritizing site monitoring and developing documentation, management, and mitigation strategies.</p

Maritime Cultural Heritage and Urbanisation in the Middle East and North Africa

Urbanisation, comprising development, land reclamation and population growth along coastal margins, continues to place significant pressure on the maritime cultural heritage (MCH), particularly in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Thus, there is a growing need for ascertaining the extent of the affected MCH resource and its condition. One such assessment is being undertaken by the Maritime Endangered Archaeology (MarEA) project, which is generating a unique informed database of the maritime resource in the MENA region. Through a regional overview combined with focused assessment on two case studies – Marsa Matruh (Egypt) and Bahrain – this paper demonstrates the threat urbanisation poses and the damage it has inflicted on MCH. The analyses and documentation that MarEA produces via remote sensing, deskbased and field-based assessments, constitutes a valuable resource that, at the very least, exists in digital perpetuity. It establishes a record that can be drawn upon to formulate targeted strategies and initiatives inclusive of the maritime cultural heritage resource

Maritime Cultural Heritage and Urbanisation in the Middle East and North Africa

Urbanisation, comprising development, land reclamation and population growth along coastal margins, continues to place significant pressure on the maritime cultural heritage (MCH), particularly in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Thus, there is a growing need for ascertaining the extent of the affected MCH resource and its condition. One such assessment is being undertaken by the Maritime Endangered Archaeology (MarEA) project, which is generating a unique informed database of the maritime resource in the MENA region. Through a regional overview combined with focused assessment on two case studies – Marsa Matruh (Egypt) and Bahrain – this paper demonstrates the threat urbanisation poses and the damage it has inflicted on MCH. The analyses and documentation that MarEA produces via remote sensing, deskbased and field-based assessments, constitutes a valuable resource that, at the very least, exists in digital perpetuity. It establishes a record that can be drawn upon to formulate targeted strategies and initiatives inclusive of the maritime cultural heritage resource

Maritime endangered archaeology of the Middle East and North Africa: the MarEA project

The ‘Maritime Endangered Archaeology’ (MarEA) project is conducting remote, large-scale identification and assessment of vulnerable maritime heritage to assist in its management in the face of challenges such as climate change and rapid urbanisation

Documenting, protecting and managing endangered maritime cultural heritage in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region

For millennia, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has been a culturally dynamic zone, bounded by maritime societies dependent on the sea for communication, trade and livelihoods. The archaeological evidence of these past societies represents an extraordinary physical legacy of human endeavour and presence across this region, contributing to senses of place, identity and belonging amongst contemporary coastal communities. However, the coastal landscapes and marine environment of the MENA region are undergoing a period of profound change, associated with large-scale human development and climate change. In order to assess this change and the level of impact on the resource, the Maritime Endangered Archaeology project (MarEA) was established in 2019 to document cultural heritage sites and landscapes across the coastal and near-shore zones of the survey region. This paper introduces the work of the project and outlines a series of case studies presented in this volume that are representative of the variety and depth of work being undertaken within the project

The maritime world of the early Bronze Age Levant through space and time

This thesis focuses on the maritime signature of the Early Bronze Age (EBA) period on the Levantine coast. It assumes the sea as the common denominator that bridges the southern, central and northern coastal Levantine sub regions. Maritime activities and their subsequent role in EBA developments are rarely acknowledged in EBA scholarship. This thesis aims to rectify this imbalance by investigating how maritime space was lived and exploited during the EBA on the Levantine coast. It does so by establishing a theoretical framework that bridges land and sea, and is flexible to adapt to variable spatial and temporal scales. The theoretical framework at the basis of this thesis is a relational and lived space and time that is heterogeneous and of manifolds. Space and time in this research are a mode of engagement with the archaeological record, manifesting practically through the methodology of thirding-as-othering with mapping, in other words, mediation with mapping. The methodology unfolds in three intertwined and connected themes of mapping land, mapping maritime activities and mapping the sea. Each one of these themes reveals folds and manifestations of the lived maritime space and time during the EBA on the coastal Levant. Mapping land interrogates the distribution of EBA coastal sites, in space and time, to show the recursive relationship between people and space through various space-time analyses. Mapping maritime activities consolidates a database of EBA maritime-related material culture and potential indicators for maritime activities. This database establishes the extant of available data and what can be derived from it. Mapping maritime activities incorporates the material record to reflect on the distribution of activities in space and time along the coastal Levant and the potential maritime connections. Mapping the sea draws on the rhythms and performance of sailing during the EBA to mediate via mapping the space and time of sailing. It proposes a model for conceiving of the maritime space-time of seafaring, distorting space according to time in such a way that Cartesian representations lose ground and space takes on new forms. Through the methodology employed in this thesis and the threefold themes of mapping land, mapping maritime activities and mapping the sea, the many folds and rhythms of the lived maritime space of the EBA coastal Levant emerge. This thesis demonstrates that the geo-political divisions of the Levant (southern, central and northern) are rigid boundaries that do not reflect EBA coastal sites interaction and distribution when rhythms of movements are accounted for. Furthermore, this thesis proves the existence of a maritime baseline of human engagement with the sea during the EBA through various activities of fishing, gathering shells, usage of coastal rocks, etc. These maritime activities form bundles across space and time that partake in interactions and developments taking place during the EBA. The potential indicators for maritime activities along with the space-time models of seafaring indicate the presence of a facilitated network of interconnectivity that bridges internally the whole of the Levantine littoral, and externally binds it with Egypt, Cyprus and Anatolia. Hence, the maritime signature of the EBA Levant transpires, not only through the various folds of the lived space and time, but also through its influence on complexity and urbanisation during the EBA. This thesis ultimately re-institutes the role of maritime space in EBA narratives. <br/

The warped sea of sailing: Maritime topographies of space and time for the Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean

Time has consistently been regarded as the missing dimension from our renderings of space, having a significant impact on how we interpret and represent past interaction. Nowhere is this more keenly felt than in discussion of maritime mobility. This paper outlines an innovative approach to mapping maritime spaces by taking into account the performance of Bronze Age sailing ships in different weather conditions and the subsequent time of sailing journeys. The use of cartograms is demonstrated to be invaluable for reconceptualisation of maritime space and rethinking maritime connectivity in the past. This marks a step-change in approach, which has implications for regions beyond the case study area (eastern Mediterranean).The results presented in this paper foreground meaningful differences in maritime connectivity between Egypt and the Levant during the earlier Bronze Age than are easily realised through traditional static representations. This demonstrates the significance of developing alternative representations of space/time for archaeology

Exploring maritime engagement in the Early Bronze Age Levant: a space/time approach

This article brings to light small-scale and everyday maritime activities through the consolidation of Early Bronze Age maritime-related material culture from the coastal Levant. By doing so, the research provides an alternative perspective on Early Bronze Age maritime activities, away from broad accounts of connectivity that neglect small-scale rhythms of coastal life. The application of temporally imbued spatial analyses serves to contextualize the material record for maritime activities in a wider sphere of coastal dynamics and interaction. Through an analysis of the whole Levantine coast, this article transcends the separation between the southern, central, and northern Levant. In this way, the sea acts as a unifying agent, a common denominator. By shifting perspectives toward the sea, emphasis is placed on the importance of maritime activities without which our understanding of Early Bronze Age coastal communities and broader Early Bronze Age developments, such as social complexity, is limited.</p