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11 - The archaeology of maritime infrastructure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Richard A. Gould
Affiliation:
Brown University, Rhode Island
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Summary

Ships of all times and places operate within an infrastructure of harbors, canals, shipyards, coastal defences, ports, docks, and specialized cargo handling and processing facilities, all of which are as important as the ships themselves. The exploration and recording of these kinds of structures have been an important part of underwater archaeology for almost a century. French engineer Gaston Jondet pioneered the archaeological study of submerged port facilities at Pharos, near Alexandria, in the early 1900s, and Andre Poidebard, a French Jesuit priest and scholar, carried out similar research at Tyre in 1934–1936. Poidebard's studies influenced later research and introduced the concept of the protoharbor, applying it specifically to the pre-Roman ports of the Levantine coast (Frost, 1972b: 97). The coastline of the eastern Mediterranean, including that of modern Syria and Israel, lacks good natural harbors and is exposed to the full force of Mediterranean winds and waves. This stretch of coastline was close to important centers of land commerce in the ancient world, so there were powerful economic incentives for the development of trading ports along this coast from the Bronze Age on.

The idea of the protoharbor was that the earliest ports along this coast would not have been built up in their entirety but instead would have depended on the presence of natural reefs, rock outcrops, and offshore islands that could be modified by flattening and shaping to provide good anchorages by extensive rock cutting.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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