'On of the Princypalle Havenes of the See': The Port of Famagusta and the Ship Graffiti in the Church of St George of the Greeks, Cyprus

In its 1000-year history the port has been the source of triumph and tragedy for the city of Famagusta, being the conduit through which flowed both enormous wealth and destruction. Today the French medieval and Greek Orthodox churches, and the Venetian walls, though ruined, still carry physical traces of this turbulent society in the form of ship graffiti. Though such images are often classified as 'low-art', they are nevertheless imbued with a deep social significance, which the maritime historian can yet use to get a glimpse of an important, though virtually-forgotten, heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean.
© 2007 The Author     

Information and Local Activism: The Case of Two County Instructors in Early Nineteenth-Century Fujian and Taiwan

This article examines the efforts of two county instructors (jiaoyu), Xie Jinluan and Zheng Jiancai, to bolster the security of the maritime frontier and stabilize local society in early 19th century Fujian and Taiwan. Occurring during the Jiaqing transition in which Chinese elites increasingly voiced concerns about problems afflicting the empire, Xie and Zheng waged an information campaign to lobby for local issues while embedded in county educational posts. Printing their treatises through their alma mater, the Aofeng Academy, Fuzhou’s premier educational institution that promoted a rigorous Neo-Confucian scholarly orientation, and using well-positioned Aofeng alumni to take their causes to Beijing, the instructors were able to make changes on the local level and provide Qing officials with a new source of “expert” local information that bypassed the regular bureaucracy. By producing information on themes of local governance and manipulating the elite network of the Aofeng Academy that connected Fujian to circles of power in Beijing, Xie and Zheng became models of local political action, influencing new generations of Fujianese scholars over the 19th century.     

Of Navies and Navels: Britain as A Mental Island

In this paper, the conception of .Great Britain. — a wholly unsatisfactory nomenclature — as an island nation is examined. In this case, a relatively small land mass acted as an originary point of departure for outward‐bound Great Power projections across the open spaces of seas. This paper further explores the varied implications for nationalism within Britain of the diverse island ‘roots’ of the British navel and the ‘routes’ of British navalism. Three themes recur in the popular mobilization of British maritime island nationalism: the besieged island, the island as universal exemplar of civilization, and the navy as national protector. Some consideration is given to the significance of island symbols such as Britannia as a marker of the fate of great island nationalism.     

Slaves to Sailors: the archaeology of traditional Caribbean shore whaling c.1850–2000. A case study from Barbados and Bequia (St Vincent Grenadines)

The archaeology of the post‐Emancipation Caribbean remains relatively understudied. The collapse of the industrial‐scale sugar plantation systems of the islands in the early 19th century saw a radical re‐organization of socio‐economic life. A new corpus of consumers was created, eking out a living on the margins of island society, but never quite liberated. This period sees the emergence of an Afro‐Caribbean maritime culture focused upon shipbuilding, fishing, turtling and whaling, the latter a particular feature of the eastern Caribbean (Windward Islands). The archaeology of whaling communities, is relatively well understood from the perspective of North America, Australasia and Europe, but less so in the Caribbean. Using two case studies based upon recent excavation and survey work, this paper sheds light on a distinctive maritime cultural response in the post‐emancipation Eastern Caribbean world.     

The Enigma of Tantura B: Historical Documentation and the Lack of Circumstantial Documentary Evidence

Tantura B is by far the first early Islamic shipwreck to be discovered off the Palestinian coast. Scientific evidence indicates that this vessel sank some time between the mid-8th and the mid-9th centuries. Neither archaeological remains nor historical sources can ascertain its exact function and origin due to the lack of circumstantial documentary evidence. However, it has been argued that the vessel could be either a coaster, capable of entering rivers or estuaries, or a support vessel operating in the Arab fleet, i.e. , it may have had been used for either military or civil purposes, or both.
© 2005 The Nautical Archaeology Society     

从海上交通看中国与百济的关系

2～7世纪的东亚世界,正处于国家整合和社会变革的非常时期。其时位于朝鲜半岛西海岸的国家——百济与中国大陆各朝代的交往最为密切和频繁,成为中国大陆、朝鲜半岛和日本列岛诸国之间沟通联系的重要使者和促进东亚汉字和儒学文化圈形成的重要媒介。透过古代史籍文献中的有关记载和考古的发现研究,以连接中国大陆东部和朝鲜半岛西部的海上交通为切入点,可以从航海史的角度揭示中国与百济之间来往和交流的历史面貌。     

清代前期上海的航业船商

清代前期上海作为南北洋航运中心,既是南北商品流通格局变化下的产物,也是清廷商品流通政策变化下的产物,海运业在上海的早期兴起过程中具有无可替代的作用。上海的兴起并迅速崛起,是建立在全国各地地域商帮的大规模商品流通基础之上的。上海的海运业者,来自江苏、浙江、山东、福建等地,其中势力最大者,是上海及其邻近沿海地区崇明、南通三地之人,单个大船商,通常拥有数十号船只。上海海运业内部,船商与船户、耆舵、水手等航运业人员,船商与客商、与豆业字号,与豆行、饼行、油行、保载行等形成错综复杂的关系。在上海,船商不仅在航业中居于中心地位,而且发挥出领袖百业的作用。     

泉州蝇埔村“蚵壳厝”牡蛎壳来源初考

为考证泉州“蚵壳厝”牡蛎壳的来源,本文利用了动物学、动物地理学知识对“蚵壳厝”所用的牡蛎壳进行了种类鉴定和分布的分析。结果显示：“蚵壳厝”的牡蛎壳由大量近江牡蛎（CraSS0Strear1Vu一]ar1S）和少量的长牡蛎（C．g1gaS）组成,这两种牡蛎都属巨牡蛎属（CraSS0strea）。动物地理学特点显示,它们都是分布在太平洋一印度洋交汇海域,东非沿海的印度洋西部并没有这些种类的分布。结合前人对海上丝绸之路的研究结果,我们认为泉州“蚵壳厝”牡蛎壳应该是来自于东南亚或南海北部沿海。     

Geochemical provenience of 16th–19th century C.E. Asian ceramics from Torres Strait,northeast Australia

Existing insights into the history of southeast Asian contacts with northern Australia prior to British colonization in 1788 are limited to Macassan visitors and the trepang industry beginning in the early 18th century and perhaps 16th century. Neither historical nor archaeological evidence indicate extension of such contacts to Torres Strait of northeast Australia. To shed further light on this issue, a collection of 16 Asian ceramic sherds surface collected and excavated recently from the islands of Pulu and Mabuyag in Torres Strait were compared to a large database of Southeast and East Asian stoneware jars that are well characterised, elementally, typologically and chronologically. This comparison matched a number of sherds with two jar types with likely production origins in Thailand and southern China. While the surface collected sherds from Pulu sourced to Thailand date probably to the 19th century, the small glazed sherd from Mabuyag island is typical of a southern Chinese decorated jar type dating to c. 1500–1600 C.E. This Chinese sherd is the earliest known Asian artefact in Australia and parallels recent archaeological evidence on the antiquity of contacts between Macassan trepangers and Aboriginal Australians. It is unknown if the Chinese sherd came ashore to Mabuyag through direct contact with Asian traders or from a nearby shipwreck through salvage.     

Archaeology of Guano: Preliminary Results of the Survey Conducted in Caleta Robles (Mejillones,Chile), 1862–83

The exploitation of guano was one of the first important economic activities in Chile and Bolivia during the 19th century. Although its development was brief and less successful than the guano industry in neighbouring Peru, it laid the foundation of a state business system based on the granting of franchises to private companies, regulation of the maritime trade and modernisation of the extractive process to improve the exploitation of mineral resources.

Caleta Robles, a guano production centre between 1862 and 1883, succeeded the exploitation of other guano deposits on the Mejillones peninsula coast from the 1840s. It represents a highly relevant coastal archaeological site illustrating the early development of the mining industry in the north of Chile.

The preliminary results of the investigations conducted on this site have created an understanding of the spatial distribution of the different functional areas relating to the different phases of the production process and their adaptation to suit the peculiar topographical conditions of the site.