New Book Chronicle: Maritime and underwater archaeology

This issue's New Book Chronicle looks at recent excavations and projects under water, which from the mid-twentieth century involved the systematic investigation of shipwrecks that, often, were historically subject to looting and treasure hunting.This branch of archaeology has long since developed beyond that and now includes prehistoric sites and landscapes, which were dry in the past but inundated and are now covered by lakes, wet sites, tidal waters and the sea.The wet environment is the biggest challenge for these projects and the reason for the enormous costs involved when compared with terrestrial archaeology.Extraordinary finds of well-preserved organic materials make it worth the effort and high budgets, but careful planning about where to excavate is always a primary concern for any project.The four publications presented here are examples of current projects and trends in maritime and underwater archaeology.The first is a conference volume called Delivering the deep: maritime archaeology for the 21st century, which showcases a multifaceted sample of what is being studied in the field with various approaches as to what questions can be asked and answered.The conference invited scholars to think about the potential of underwater archaeology for future research.This is much in line with the next reviewed book Submerged prehistory in the Americas: methods, approaches and results, which concentrates on submerged landscapes in the Americas and offers a practical guide on what is possible and what other venues could be explored in future.An archaeology of piracy has also been developed over the past 30 years and Dead man's chest: exploring the archaeology of piracy assesses what has been achieved so far, in terms of whether pirates can be discerned in the archaeological record (not as the popular opinion might suggest through wooden legs and eye patches!).Similar in many research aspects to Dead man's chest is the last book looking at one shipwreck in detail, The Swash Channel wreck: an archaeological investigation of a 17th-century armed Dutch merchantman.It is a more typical marine archaeology project, yet it has some uncommon traits; it is about a ship sailing at the same time as pirates were operating, which would have likely been involved in campaigns against them.The discussions on the protection and excavation as well as the detective work in the historical archives is of course similar to that undertaken on the pirate ships.All books go beyond their immediate aims and also evaluate their projects and research topics in terms of where we are now and what comes next.This approach seems to be more strongly ingrained in underwater archaeology, possibly due to the more challenging and expensive undertakings ensuring that there is more careful consideration into where and what to study.