A Jura For Julia by Ken Macleod

A Jura For Julia by Ken Macleod

Reconstructing a Maritime Past>argues that rather than applying geo-ethnic labels to shipwrecks to describe Greek or Roman seafaring, a more intriguing alternative emphasizes a maritime culture's valorization of the Mediterranean Sea. Doing so creates new questions and research agendas to understand the past human relationship with the sea.

This study makes this argument in three sections. Chapters 1 and 2, contrasting intellectual histories of maritime archaeological interpretive approaches common in Northern Europe and the Mediterranean, propose that the former perspective - which embodies contemporary and fluid perceptions of>culture>- is a better theoretical framework for future research. Chapters 3-5 re-interpret the corpus of submerged sites in the Mediterranean Sea with this approach, arguing that this dataset does not represent Phoenician, Muslim, or Byzantine seafaring, but the practices of a maritime culture. Key to this section is the author's method that utilizes superimposed polygons to model patterns of maritime activity, generating centennial results at different scales. Having built the models of a maritime culture's valorization of the Mediterranean Sea, Chapter 6 contains the first comparisons of these models to other datasets, questioning the relevance of textual media to understand maritime activity, while finding closer analogues with other archaeological corpora.

By deconstructing interpretive methods in maritime archaeology, offering a new synthesizing interpretive approach that is scalable and decoupled from past perceptions, and critically examining the applicability of various media to illuminate the past maritime experience, this book will appeal to scholars at various stages of their careers.

Ken MacLeod is one of the brightest and most progressive of Britain's new Hard SF stars who are navigating exciting new futures, to the delight of a growing legion of fans around the world. His award-winning works combine cutting-edge scientific speculation, socialist and anarchist themes, and a deep humanistic vision. Described by fans and detractors alike as a techno-utopian socialist, MacLeod delights in engaging recognizable characters in far-flung adventures across the boundaries of space and time. Born in Scotland's legendary Outer Isles, MacLeod graduated from Glasgow University with a degree in zoology and has worked as a computer programmer and written a masters thesis on biomechanics. A regular in British SF and progressive circles, he is married and has two children. He lives in South Queensferry, Scotland.