Books by Matthew Harpster
Papers and Chapters by Matthew Harpster
Expedition Magazine, 2024
Contemporary Philosophy for Maritime Archaeology, 2023
From the recent volume edited by Sara Rich and Peter Campbell, with Sidestone Press.
The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, 2021
Human activity along the Amalfi coastline in Italy has been tied to the sea for millenniafor sust... more Human activity along the Amalfi coastline in Italy has been tied to the sea for millenniafor sustenance, migration, trade, warfare, and leisure. As a result, this region has an equally rich and extensive maritime cultural landscape composed of tangible and intangible elements. In 2016, a multidisciplinary project began efforts to model and to understand changes within this landscape, and this essay presents the preliminary results of our first three seasons of work. Some efforts, such as the documentation of maritime cultural heritage in local museums, archival work, and geomorphological research proceeded smoothly. Unexpectedly, however, little material from the pre-modern era was found under water, adding questions to this study that future work in the Marine Protected Area west of Positano may answer.
Rassegna del Centro di Cultura e Storia Amalfitana, 2020
This is a preliminary report by the team modeling the maritime cultural landscape of the Amalfi c... more This is a preliminary report by the team modeling the maritime cultural landscape of the Amalfi coastline. Please cite the complete list of authors: Athena Trakadas, Elif Denel, Vincenzo Capriglione, Carlotta Lucarini, Marie Meranda, Mattia Morselli, Robyn Pelling, Iain Bennett, Chiara Zazzaro, Özge Demirci, Carlo Donadio, Luigi Ferranti, Corrado Stanislao, Luca Zavagno, Paolo Pecci.
Journal of Archaeological Science, 2019
With a goal of understanding and visualizing the shifting concentrations of movement across the M... more With a goal of understanding and visualizing the shifting concentrations of movement across the Mediterranean Sea on a centennial basis, the MISAMS (Modeling Inhabited Spaces of the Ancient Mediterranean Sea) Project developed a new GIS-based interpretive methodology that collates and superimposes a series of polygons to model densities of maritime activity in the Mediterranean Sea from the 7th century BC to the 7th century AD. After discussing the project's use of place, space, and maritime landscapes as a theoretical background, this paper explains this new methodology then demonstrates and tests results representing activity in the 1st-century BC western-Mediterranean basin. These results, apparently manifesting distinct socially-constructed places, suggest that this new approach creates new opportunities to understand the movement of people and goods across the Mediterranean in the past, and the varying uses and perceptions of maritime space in antiquity. As this method requires a dense and well-studied corpora of archaeological data, it is theoretically applicable to other maritime regions that have (or will have) the appropriate dataset, and may represent a new research agenda in maritime archaeology.
Al-Masaq, 2019
As part of the Ancient Maritime Dynamics project, this study uses a new interpretive methodology ... more As part of the Ancient Maritime Dynamics project, this study uses a new interpretive methodology to model the creation and use of maritime places in the western-Mediterranean basin. In turn, the results of this modelling suggest that the waters around the island of Sicily acted as a frontier, distinguishing a distinct zone of activity in the western Mediterranean as well as a western maritime community that segregated itself from other sailors and merchants elsewhere in the sea. ARTICLE HISTORY
In Ships and Maritime Landscapes, edited by Gawronski, van Holk, and Schokkenbroek, 2017
From my presentation at the International Symposium in Boat and Ship Archaeology (ISBSA) in Amste... more From my presentation at the International Symposium in Boat and Ship Archaeology (ISBSA) in Amsterdam, from 2013.
Please see volume 6 of JEMAHS for a special issue on maritime archaeology in the eastern Mediterr... more Please see volume 6 of JEMAHS for a special issue on maritime archaeology in the eastern Mediterranean
Turkish translation by Elif Denel.
Please find this essay, and the others in the forum, at www.jstor.org.
Knowledge, Differences, and Identity in the Time of Globalization: Institutional Discourse and Practices, 2011
This essay describes the educational imbalances that arise through the long-term application of g... more This essay describes the educational imbalances that arise through the long-term application of global conventions at the local level, through the lens of maritime archaeology.
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Books by Matthew Harpster
Papers and Chapters by Matthew Harpster
From the ancients’ cries of “Thalatta, thalatta” to the Italian and Greek (and eventually Turkish) nationalist, as well as British and French colonialist, claims over the Anatolian island-continent, seas, coasts, lakes and rivers have featured prominently in the everyday life of its many peoples and ideas. A few examples should suffice: the Sakarya River played a key role in history of the ancient site of Gordion, it also featured centrally in the Turkish war of independence; the Bosphorus is as conspicuous in ancient geography and mythology (resonating with the names of Io and Jason, Chares and Darius) as it is in modern politics (the Montreux Convention). Moreover, it is crucial to keep in mind that the division we often take for granted may not be so neat when analysed in more depth – the legendary cosmopolitan and forward-looking cities on the cost (e.g. Izmir), for example, were intimately connected to and dependent upon the supposedly traditional and inward-looking areas further inland.
The aquatic lens is still too rarely used to understand the history of Anatolia. Building upon the new oceanic and environmental turns in the humanities, this conference brings together archaeologists, historians, and other scholars of various periods from the Bronze to the Digital Age to explore the history of liquid Anatolia, not envisioned in direct opposition to the land, but rather in its hybrid relationality that defies easy categorization. Where a river ends and the sea begins, where coastal water and the shore and other borders separate, more complicated than first meets the eye. We especially hope to build on the existing literature devoted to Byzantine, Ottoman and Turkish maritime history as well as the recent works on the prehistory of Anatolian and Mediterranean rivers by transcending the simple dichotomies between the terrestrial and the aquatic, freshwater and seawater, prehistory and history.