Gamming Chairs and Gimballed Beds: Seafaring Women on Board Nineteenth-Century Ships

During the nineteenth century, many captains’ wives from New England took up residence on the ships their husbands commanded. This article focuses on how those women at sea attempted to use material culture to domesticate their voyaging space. While writing in their journals, they referred to not only the small personal things such as books and knitting needles that they brought in their trunks, but also large items, built for and used by women, such as gamming chairs, deckhouses, parlor organs, sewing machines, and gimballed beds. Mary Brewster attempted to retreat from the ship’s officers in her small deckhouse, Annie Brassey slept in the gimballed bed, and Lucy Lord Howes disembarked in a gamming chair when captured by Confederates during the Civil War. Evidence of these artifacts found during shipwreck archaeology could be used to further what is known of the culture aboard ships on which women lived. Analysis of the material culture reveals how a captain’s wife domesticated space, altered her environment, and made a home on the ship for her family.     

Of Ships and Deer: early Western Mediterranean ship graffiti reappraised

Re‐analysis of the Hal Tarxien prehistoric ship graffiti, the incised figure on a pottery sherd, from the Neolithic site of Grapceva cave on a Croatian island, known as the ‘Hvar boat’, and the Villanovian‐Etruscan bronze razor from Bologna allow the last two to be reinterpreted as animals rather than ships, and the first to be dated to the Bronze Age Cemetery phase of the site. These findings require the earliest ship graffiti in the western Mediterranean to be reconsidered.     

Salt and Fish Processing in the Ancient Mediterranean: A Brief Survey

The demand for salt generated by the dietary and domestic needs of most Greek city-states could be usually fulfilled by local resources given the general abundance of salt along the coasts of the ancient Mediterranean. The extremely rare references to interregional salt trade in literary and documentary sources corroborate this idea. As a bulky commodity with little economic value, salt was too expensive to be transported over long distances and was more conveniently obtainable from local resources. However, the situation was different when large-scale fish processing centers entered into the equation. The production and widespread distribution of processed fish required a steady supply of both fish and salt. Salt only was able to transform fish—which is otherwise extremely perishable—into a durable commodity, easy to store and trade. The strategic importance that salt assumed at these centers transformed its economic significance and made interregional trade both convenient and profitable. Also, it was through the medium of processed fish that the surplus of salt production available in certain regions was redistributed across the Mediterranean and came to play an important, albeit indirect, role in interregional trade.     

Ancient Sounding-Weights and Navigation along the Mediterranean Coast of Israel

Underwater archaeological investigations in Israel have recovered scores of sounding-weights of varying shapes, weights and ages. Sixty-three examples kept in Israel Antiquities Authority collections are described in detail, discussed, and placed in a tentative typology of sounding-weight types from the Israeli coast. Finds from shipwreck assemblages enabled dating of some types. Integration of the topography and hydrography of the Israeli coast with site-formation processes provides a theoretical explanation for the high number of weights recovered from Israeli underwater sites.
© 2009 The Authors     

The Conception of Hull Shape by Shell‐builders in the Ancient Mediterranean

Did ancient Mediterranean shipbuilders at the turn of the first millennium have methods to pre‐design the shape of their hulls prior to the construction of the ship? If so, can these methods be identified? This paper proposes that ancient shipwrights were in possession of such design methods, based on geometry, that are comparable to the medieval and post medieval hull‐design procedures called whole‐moulding. These methods are well suited to be transformed into rules‐of‐thumb, therefore allowing the storage and transmission of accumulated knowledge. The implications of this proposal on the present understanding of the transition from shell‐ to skeleton‐building are explored.     

古代"守中治边"、"守在四夷"治边思想初探

“守中治边”与“守在四夷”,是古代大多数封建王朝治边思想的核心,也是制定各项边疆治策理论的基础。在封建统治者看来,“守中”之地与“四夷”之地之间有明确的划分;大多数封建王朝所追求的理想境界,是国家的腹心地区安定繁荣,在边陲地区实现“守在四夷”。本文对“守中治边”与“守在四夷”说法的由来、内涵及其产生的影响,做了初步阐述与分析。     

论16、17世纪之交西北欧商人商船南下地中海

16、17世纪之交,西北欧商人商船纷纷南下欧洲经济重心区———地中海世界。在西北欧商人商船大规模南下之时,西北欧还只是欧洲一个半边缘地区,然而当南下过程接进尾声之时,西北欧却一跃而成为欧洲新的经济重心区,其中荷兰取代了威尼斯、热那亚而跃升为欧洲新的领导者。西北欧商人商船南下地中海的过程对后来西北欧经济的发展具有重要的历史与现实意义。     

Sailing and Sailing Rigs in the Ancient Mediterranean: implications of continuity,variation and change in propulsion technology

Ships and boats form the foundations of the maritime connectivity that is a central part of our understanding of the ancient Mediterranean. While the general chronological sequence of sail and sailing‐rig development is well established, the implications are less‐well discussed. This article sets out how sails and sailing rigs developed in antiquity, with emphasis on the Greco‐Roman world. Subsequently, instances of innovation are defined. Why specific pieces of maritime technology were, or were not, widely adopted is considered. Long‐term technological continuity can be comprehended, and a shared maritime culture of sailing in the ancient Mediterranean is suggested.