Challenging Exoticization: Maritime Archaeology Logistics in West Africa and Eastern Canada

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Africa is often acknowledged in western academic spheres as a challenging archaeological fieldwork destination due to logistical issues like minimal internet resources, language barriers, and unfamiliar legal and physical landscapes. However, these traits are by no means exclusive to the African continent, and logistical issues are no longer a good reason to ignore the vast potential of maritime archaeology in Africa. This paper explores archaeological practice in two seemingly different regions: Greenville area, Sinoe County, Liberia, and Gaspé, Quebec, Canada. Work in these regions has responded to and worked within environmental and climate constraints, engaged communities of diverse stakeholders, reduced Internet and data access, site destruction and topographical change, and worked within funding constraints to pursue new and exciting avenues of study. By emphasizing the commonalities in the constraints and opportunities of our archaeological efforts, we seek to underline the universality of these challenges and our responses to them.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow