Tag: cfp

Harbor Archaeology: Between Local Communities and Connective Seas

The Maritime Archaeology Interest Group of the AIA (MAIG) invites abstracts for a session focusing on the ways that ports, harbors and their attendant spaces shaped – and were shaped – by the diverse communities that inhabited them. Harbors, ranging from monumental urban ports to informal anchorages, exist at the intersection of the global and the local. These spaces serve as nodes in interregional exchange and loci for imperially or nationally sponsored building programs. At the same time, they are also lived spaces utilized by communities for economic opportunity, resource procurement, and community building. This panel puts the local at the forefront, centering community experience from the Shores of the Great Lakes to the wine-dark waters of the Mediterranean Sea.

We recognize harbors as flexible, multifaceted, and evolving spaces, encompassing large-scale seaports, as well as natural inlets, lakeshores, rivers, and beachfronts. Whatever their form, harbors were centers for diverse activities with distinct archaeological footprints. Far from static, they frequently underwent processes of decay, abandonment, reuse, and resurgence.

We seek papers that examine the reciprocal relationship between these changing spaces and the people that inhabited them. As liminal spaces of exchange and mobility, harbors shape cultural identities, religious expression, economic strategies, and political actions. Harborscapes are equally transformed by communities who navigated, ascribed meaning to, and negotiated their place within them. In conversation with the Annual Meeting’s theme of ‘Care and Mutual Aid,’ we especially welcome contributions addressing how communities were constructed and sustained in dynamic maritime landscapes. Hosted in Boston, a historic port city shaped by centuries of exchange, migration, labor, and resistance, this conversation is particularly apt. We aim to highlight how harbors function not only as nodes of connectivity, but as lived environments that actively structure daily life.

Please Note:  We invite paper proposals for a session at the 2027 AIA/SCS Annual Meeting in Boston, January 7 – 10, 2027. Abstract submissions will close March 18, 2026. The session organizers will review abstracts and send decisions to authors in April. The session will only run if given final approval by the AIA. This is planned as a hybrid panel.

Application Submission: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdI24mKX6gMwFt-rFOuHtlkW7ac7xdhKiOfxg52gCcHUhrhVQ/viewform?usp=publish-editor