Abstract
In 1992, the maritime archaeologist Christer Westerdahl proposed the ‘maritime cultural landscape’ as a theoretical approach to studying the remains of human activity on coasts. 1 The maritime cultural landscape was a novel framework that moved beyond shipwreck studies, throwing a wide net for reconstructing human maritime activity. A maritime-cultural-landscape approach combines underwater and terrestrial physical remains of maritime culture (such as shipwrecks, submerged settlements, harbour infrastructure, warehouses, fish ponds and shrines) with intangible remains (such as place names, settlement patterns, boat-naming conventions, construction techniques and religious beliefs). The maritime-cultural-landscape approach quickly became popular amongst maritime archaeologists as it offered a means of integrating many different types of material and methodological approaches through the lens of a human–water connection.
The present volume aims to revisit and expand Westerdahl's maritime-cultural-landscape framework. The co-editors, Veronica Walker Vadillo, Emilia Mataix Ferrándiz and Elisabeth Holmqvist, refer to this renewed conceptual approach as ‘down by the water’. Their aim is to expand the ‘maritime’ focus beyond the coast to envelop all watery environs, including rivers and estuaries, inland lakes, submerged land, man-made canals and even desert oases. They argue that because bodies of water historically drew people for sustenance, communication and trade, ‘down by the water’ is a near universal setting for human activity over time. As a result, liminal land–water boundaries have shaped and been shaped by human activity. The editors suggest that ‘down by the water’ as a ‘physical place’ and ‘conceptual space’ can be used to connect disparate and creative ways of interpreting the past on a broad and deep scale (2). A ‘down by the water’ approach, therefore, can help researchers from different backgrounds think about the role water plays in their own work, and how their approach could enrich the work of others.
The collection is subdivided into four interrelated parts: ‘Water as Place of Encounter and Movement’, ‘Water as Liminal Place of Human–Nature Entanglements’, ‘Water as Mental Landscape’ and ‘Production and Distribution’. The 12 chapters contained within these sections roam widely in every way: regionally, temporally, topically, methodologically, and in the nature of and role played by water. Regionally, chapters address Europe, the Mediterranean, India, Inner Asia, Mesoamerica, the United States, the Russian Far East and Cambodia. Temporally, they range from the fifteenth century
The wide-ranging depth of the volume, and the variety of approaches to human activity around, on and in water it presents, is impressive. It effectively exposes readers of different backgrounds to new ways of thinking about the past that could be incorporated into future interdisciplinary work on humanity in watery spaces. Holmqvist's chapter on analysing ceramics chemically, for example, shows how the geochemical make-up of clay can be used to identify production regions and exchange more precisely than the traditional approach of mapping stylistic changes across space and time. Kasper Hanus, on the other hand, suggests that archaeologists – and historians – can apply development-study frameworks for assessing community resilience to help interpret the success of historical settlements in environments that do not immediately appear hospitable. These and other approaches presented in the volume could open new avenues for historians looking to trace human activity in regions or time periods where traditional textual material is scarce.
While Down by the Water illustrates the diversity of research that touches on human interactions with or mediated by water, the variety of the collection is also its weakness. The range of topics and approaches, connected only by the presence of water in some form, lacks cohesion and accessibility. The presentation of so many technical chapters alongside each other is a challenge; many of the chapters require baseline knowledge of specialist disciplines, which makes them difficult to appreciate fully as a non-expert reader. The collection as a resource for a wide scholarly audience could have been strengthened if the authors of each chapter had addressed how they engaged with ‘down by the water’ as a conceptual framework, or explicitly discussed how water impacted their study subjects and their own interpretations. Without such discussions, the result is a loose confederation of interesting pieces that all include some sort of reference to water. More engagement with the unifying concept of ‘down by the water’ within each chapter could have greatly strengthened the cohesion of the collection while maintaining the seemingly limitless approach to geography, time period and methodology.
Ultimately, Down by the Water is a decisive demonstration of the idea that disparate approaches can speak to each other across disciplinary boundaries when a common ground (or puddle) can be found to tie ideas together. It suggests that ‘maritime’-focused researchers should not hesitate to look for inspiration and collaborators outside of the usual places. This broad approach to water is a useful reference for maritime historians who are interested in liminality and looking for new ways to approach old subject matter. Down by the Water can helpfully be read alongside history's answers to liminal conceptual frameworks, such as Michael Pearson's littoral history, Isaac Land's ‘paramaritime’ and Alison Bashford's ‘terraqueous histories’. 2