This volume presents multiple idiographic, archaeological studies of vernacular watercraft from North America and the Caribbean. Rather than attempt to synthesize all vernacular types, this volume focuses on ship construction data recovered through archaeological investigations that has been used to make inferences about culture. This collection of case studies, including many examples from cultural resource management and graduate student theses, presents a thematic exploration of cultural adaptation as expressed through ship construction.

This edition brings together all the archaeological knowledge of the world's boats and ships for the benefit of the maritime archaeologist, as well as for the general reader and enthusiast, the historian and the student. But is is much more than a catalogue of the world's boat finds. The author has collated all the available evidence on the evolution of boat- and shipbuilding through the ages, and examines it as a crucial part of the development of changing civilizations.

The historical importance and archaeological potential of deliberately discarded watercraft has not been a major feature of maritime archaeological enquiry. While research on the topic has appeared since the 1970s as books, chapters, and articles, most examples have been limited in focus and distribution, and in most cases disseminated as unpublished archaeological reports (i.e. the “gray literature”.) So, too, has there been a lack of a single source representing the diversity of geographical, historic, thematic, and theoretical contexts that ships’ graveyard sites and deliberately abandoned vessels represent. In contrast with much of the theoretical or case-specific literature on the theme of watercraft discard, this volume communicates to the reader the common heritage and global themes that ships’ graveyard sites represent. It serves as a blueprint to illustrate how the remains of abandoned vessels in ships' graveyards are sites of considerable research value. Moreover, the case studies in this volume assist researchers in understanding the evolution of maritime technologies, economies, and societies. This volume is intended to expose research potential, create discussion, and reinforce the significance of a prevalent cultural resource that is often overlooked.

From sewn planked boats in Early Dynastic Egypt to Late Roman wrecks in Italy, and the design of Venetian Merchant Galleys, this huge volume gathers together fifty-three papers presenting new research on the archaeology and history of ancient ships and shipbuilding traditions. The papers have been grouped into several thematic sections, including: ships of the Mediterranean; the reconstruction of ancient ships, from life-size reconstructions to computer models; the study of shipyards, shipsheds and slipways of the Mediterranean and Europe; Venetian Galleys of the 15th and 16th centuries; and North European medieval and post -medieval ships. These papers which were presented at the Ninth International Symposium on Boat and Ship Archaeology (ISBSA), held in Venice 2000. Carlo Beltrame is a free-lance archaeologist and contract professor of Maritime archaeology at Università Ca' Foscari of Venice and of Naval archaeology at Universita della Tuscia of Viterbo. He specialises in the archaeology of ship-construction from antiquity until the Renaissance period and methodology in maritime archaeology.

At last a paperback edition of this standard work on marine archaeology. Séan McGrail's study received exceptional critical acclaim when it was first published in hardback in 1987 and it is now revised and published in paperback for the first time. Professor McGrail provides an authoritative survey of water transport across Northern Europe from the Late Palaeolithic to the later Middle Ages, using evidence of excavations, but also documentary sources, iconographic and ethnographic evidence. In the process he answers such key questions as How were these boats built? What sort of environment were they used in? What speeds could they achieve? and how were they navigated?

Few maritime landscapes in the Great Lakes remain so deeply and clearly inscribed by successive cultures as the St. Clair system—a river, delta, and lake found between Lake Huron and the Detroit River. The St. Clair River and its environs are an age-old transportation nexus of land and water routes, a strategic point of access to maritime resources, and, in many ways, a natural impediment to the navigation of the Great Lakes. From Indigenous peoples and European colonizers to the modern nations of Canada and the United States, this work traces the region’s transformation through culturally driven practices and artifacts of shipbuilding, navigation, place naming, and mapmaking. In this novel approach to maritime landscape archaeology, author Daniel F. Harrison unifies historiography, linguistics, ethnohistory, geography, and literature through the analysis of primary sources, material culture, and ecological and geographic data in a technique he calls "evidence-based storytelling." Viewed over time, the region forms a microcosm of the interplay of environment, culture, and technology that characterized the gradual shift from nature to an industrial society and a built environment optimized for global waterborne transport.