Maritime Cultural Heritage and Sustainability
The centre works to document and protect maritime cultural heritage and to build capacity for maritime archaeological work around the world.
This includes working to international Best Practice within the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage and working towards the UN Sustainability Goals, especially SDG 14, where our work brings together research into ocean science and environmental change with people, heritage and identity.
Changing Marine and Coastal Environments
Our work adds a human dimension to narratives of climate change and sea-level rise through deep-time to the present, including:
- modelling coastal change on long and short timescales
- palaeogeographic reconstructions of submerged landscapes
- marine geoarchaeology of the offshore zone
- consultancy for offshore development
- coastal and offshore survey
- community heritage
Shipwrecks and Seafarers
Our researchers are working on a number of coastal, submerged and shipwreck sites around the world. Their research is multidisciplinary and wide-ranging, encompassing the use of archives and iconography, digital technologies, marine survey, diving and cutting-edge deepwater technology and robotics, as well as community practice and ethnographic studies of traditional seafaring practices. Projects span from the study of maritime technology and the evidence of seafaring, boats and ships, to trade, ports, harbours and maritime society from our earliest origins to the present day.
Current projects include:
- Palaeolithic and Neolithic seafaring
- Bronze Age
- Ancient Greeks
- Romans
- Ottomans
- Vikings
- Medieval societies
- Development of global shipping