Contextualizing Maritime Archaeology in Australasia

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Contextualizing Maritime Archaeology in Australasia," at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Over the past 50 years, maritime archaeology in Australasia has provided significant evidence and insights to Indigenous, domestic and international seafaring contexts. Recent studies of Australasia’s diverse maritime cultural heritage focus on ships and seafaring through detailed recording, study and interpretation of extant hull remains, ship construction, and iconography. This work goes beyond single-site approaches of limited temporal and geographical dimensions, and instead enquires into vernacular and industrial technology, and the socio-economic complexity of seafaring and watercraft in general. This session invites presentations of recent Australasian projects that contribute to our understanding of seafaring and shipbuilding, and that offer future regional directions for maritime archaeology in an internationally relevant thematic context.