Skip to main content
European Commission logo print header

Modelling Inhabited Spaces of the Ancient Mediterranean Sea

Objective

MISAMS is cross-disciplinary, intersectorial study that combines state-of-the-art methods and theories in Archaeology, Anthropology, History and Social Geography with field surveys off the coast of Turkey to model the construction and inhabitation of maritime space in the ancient Mediterranean Sea. MISAMS’ main hypothesis is that maritime archaeology’s dominant reliance upon idiographic interpretations of shipwrecks has limited the discipline’s flexibility and understanding, leading to perceptions of seafaring activities that reflect paradigms no longer prevalent in the Social Sciences. MISAMS aims to re-study the discipline’s data with new perceptions that stress two characteristics: A) cross-cultural patterning instead of idiographic labels such as ‘Greek’ or ‘Venetian’, and B) that the sea is a constructed, inhabited landscape equivalent to that on land and, thus, embodies a maritime community. By integrating the archaeological and historical and creating a more holistic model of seafaring activity, MISAMS’ vision is to re-fashion maritime archaeology into an anthropological study by focusing on people’s habits, not objects and, as a result, synthesize practitioners’ current methods of in-situ management with a new field methodology stressing survey over excavation, and impact legislation and policy makers with a common interpretive structure that no longer stresses constructed national links between the present and the past.

Call for proposal

FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IEF
See other projects for this call

Coordinator

THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
EU contribution
€ 299 558,40
Address
Edgbaston
B15 2TT Birmingham
United Kingdom

See on map

Region
West Midlands (England) West Midlands Birmingham
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Administrative Contact
May Chung (Ms.)
Links
Total cost
No data