I’m going to start another course; this time, although it is archaeology again, it is completely different because it is marine archaeology. The actual titile is ‘Shipwrecks and Submerged Worlds’. The course started with a number of people who are already studying, or teaching, or doing this, trying to define what exactly it is, how they think of it themselves; then, we as students had to try and give our own thoughts, and try to explain why we were interested and what we hoped to achieve.
That’s difficult! Even those who already knew something about it struggled to answer… One person said it was like any other archaeology except focussing on the sea; another said it was what those with connections to the sea had left behind for us; somebody else said it was to do with the coastline and how those on it interacted with the sea, and someone said it could be anything you want it to be!
Living by the sea and being interested in archaeology I would like to understand more about how archaeologists work in maritime conditions, whether it’s on the shoreline or under the sea. Where we live has over the millennia either been fathoms deep beneath the waves, or miles away from the sea… now we live about 300 yards away from it and about 3 inches above it. In my featured picture, we’re looking across the mouth of the river to some higher land beyond. At different times in history, the higher land you can see has been a hill inland, or an island!
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/shipwrecks
Lois Elsden 