1st Edition

The Culture of Ships and Maritime Narratives

Edited By Chryssanthi Papadopoulou Copyright 2019
    210 Pages
    by Routledge

    210 Pages 12 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    The ship transcends the descriptive categories of place, vehicle and artefact; it is a cosmos, which requires its own cosmology. This is the subject matter of this volume, which falls within the broader, flourishing sub-field of maritime anthropology. Specifically, the volume first investigates the dialectic between the sea, the ship and the ship-dweller and shows how traits are exchanged between the three. It then focuses on land-dwellers, their understanding of seaborne existence and their invaluable contribution to the culture of ships. It  shows that the romanticised views of life at sea that land-dwellers hold constitute an important aspect of the cosmology of ships and they too need to be considered if the polyvalence of ships is to be fully understood.



    In order for this cosmology to be written, some of the volume’s contributors have travelled on ships and interviewed mariners, fishermen, boat-builders and boat-dwellers; others have traced the courses of ships in poems, films, philosophical texts, and collective myths of genealogy and heritage. Overall the volume shows where ships can go, and how they are perceived and experienced by those living and travelling in them, watching and waiting for them, dreaming and writing about them, and, finally, what literal and metaphorical crews man them. 

    List of Figures





    Preface and Acknowledgements





    List of Contributors





    Ship cosmology: an introduction



    Chryssanthi Papadopoulou





    Part I Seafaring Ships





    The boatbuilder, boat building, and the creation of socialities



    Elena Maragoudaki





    Seafaring in the Mediterranean: intercultural interaction and loneliness on board



    Giorgos Tsimouris





    A woman on a fishing boat: an ethnographic account of wilderness, familiarity and gender relations



    Brigida Marovelli





    Dwelling, pollution, and the rhetorical creation of "nature" on inland waterways



    Benjamin O L Bowles





    Part II Shorefaring Ships





    Ships in the sky: maritime mythistories in the Pindos Mountains



    Daniel M. Knight





    The ship as the symbol of emigration in Greek cinema



    Eleni N. Mitakou





    What we think about when we think about ships: a journey through philosophical metaphors



    Chryssanthi Papadopoulou





    Shipwreck is everywhere



    Alicia E. Stallings





    Afterthoughts



    John Bennet





    Index





     

    Biography

    Chryssanthi Papadopoulou is a maritime archaeologist, a Classicist and the Assistant Director of the British School at Athens. She has published on the perception of shipwrecks by maritime archaeologists; underwater sites of various periods; Greek religion; and the archaeology of Classical Athens, and has been excavating shipwrecks in the eastern Mediterranean since 2005. Her research draws on various disciplines including land and maritime archaeology, philosophy, anthropology and analytical psychology.