Seacountries of Northern Australia and Island Neighbours

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Seacountries of Northern Australia and Island Neighbours," at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In this session we will explore interdisciplinary approaches to studies of maritime interactions and encounters with a particular focus on the Seacountries of Northern Australia. We aim to productively engage with the complexity of ocean based social relationships, as well as the mobility of people and things. Inspired by the oceanic turn in the humanities, the so called ‘blue humanities’, or the “New Thalassology” we are seeking a range of perspectives that offer innovative methodological and theoretical approaches and new intellectual avenues for understanding the dynamic trajectories of ocean encounters. We encourage maritime and historical archaeological approaches along with text-based histories, and anthropological archaeology. We are particularly interested in studies where the sea provides interactions, encounters, followed by accommodation, resistance, trade, exchange and ‘settlement’. We encourage advances in the integration of maritime, coastal and island landscapes and a deeper understanding of complex social, sentient, and geomorphic relationships through time.