Landscapes

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Maritime Landscapes

A.J. Parker

To cite this article: A.J. Parker (2001) Maritime Landscapes, Landscapes, 2:1, 22-41

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/lan.2001.2.1.22

Published online: 29 Nov 2013.

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 
(2001), 1, pp. 22–41
© A. J. Parker
Maritime Landscapes

A. J. Parker

Abstract
The sea is not a palimpsest of human activity, in contrast with much of the
land, but none the less both the sea, the foreshore and the coastal margin, when
they are suitably observed and interpreted, contain clues to their exploitation in
the past. Ships may penetrate beyond the coastal zone as such to nodal points
such as ports or bridgeheads, which often lie well inland. The maritime landscape
thus has to be interpreted, rather than merely plotted or observed, with the aid
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of models; these models tend to be more easily formulated for historic periods.
This means that, for early or primitive contacts by sea, the informed observation
of natural landscape features and an appreciation of the long-established para-
meters of navigation and pilotage are the best means of envisaging maritime
settlement and economy in earlier times.

The cuckoo cries, incites the eager breast

On to the whale’s roads irresistibly
Over the wide expanses of the sea . . .
The Seafarer (Hamer 1970, 191)

The call of the sea has long been recognised as an alternative prompt for action,
as an invitation to leave the regular round of rural or urban life and explore
distant places, even if at the expense of great danger and hardship. Life on
board ship takes on a routine of its own, with its own rules and norms of
behaviour, and, in extreme cases, the seaman may become a stranger or a misfit
in his home society. The history of maritime contact is one of movement, of
transport, and of changing scenery, unlike the repetitive, introverted surround-
ings of much terrestrial life. The very basis of sea travel, the surface of the
ocean, is changeable and mobile, unlike the firm land, which can preserve, in
its surface features, the record of past activities and be read like a palimpsest
by the landscape historian or archaeologist. How can the sea and the coastal
zone be brought within a coherent scheme for the reconstruction of settlement
and economy in former times – that is to say, within the realm of landscape
history and archaeology?

22
 A. J. Parker From the maritime point of view, one can define three ascending levels of
landscape archaeology. The first is the plot, the observation and the mapping
of features, sometimes called ‘the relict cultural landscape’ (Westerdahl 1992).
The plot is the field of cultural resource management, as exemplified by Fulford,
Champion and Long (1997), and, as Westerdahl (1994, 266) admits, was the
initial connotation of the term ‘maritime cultural landscape’.
The second level may be termed the pattern, sometimes called ‘material
culture’ or ‘archaeology’. On land, the use of regressive mapping to identify
phased patterning is a well-established technique; the surface of the open sea
cannot be treated in this way, but submerged and inter-tidal cultural remains
and features at the coast or on water routes inland, especially nodal points or
articulations (e.g. harbours, locks) can. As Westerdahl (1994) says, this is not
merely survey or conservation, but implies ‘a theory on man’s relationship with
the shore and the sea’. He has defined the appropriate articulations as transport
zones, which lie at right angles to the coast, and local zones, which lie in belts
parallel to the coast. Similar concepts are used by Sherratt (1996), who identifies
trans-isthmian routes and patterns of linkage between adjacent coastlands.
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The contact points between zones of either type comprise transition points,
which will often, according to Westerdahl, be maritime enclaves, and are
usually marked in the natural landscape by moraines, uplift zones, rapids or
dangerous seas, so the pattern speaks for itself.
The third level of landscape archaeology, the interpretative model, comes into
play where, as for instance in some of the examples from Britain which will
be cited later on, a full understanding of the landscape involves a functional
interpretation – the web of interactions which constitute the maritime cultural
landscape, according to Firth, Watson and Ellis (1998), or the system, ‘the
total of all activities which have taken place in a given sea area’, in the definition
of Westerdahl (1994). Such an interpretation depends, of course, on a theory
of social and political organisation in the past, that is to say, on models, which,
for pre- or protohistoric studies, have to be based, not on documentary evidence,
but on artefact distributions, traditional practice or common sense. To develop
such a creative interpretation has been defined by Crumlin-Pedersen (1996) as
a major objective of maritime archaeology – namely, ‘to learn to perceive the
landscape and the settlements as they were seen with the eyes of the sailor or
fisherman in the past, approaching land from the sea or from navigable rivers’.

Problems of maritime archaeology

Coastal structures, such as wharves or quays, represent only part of the facilities,
whether natural or artificial, which were used by boats and ships in earlier
times, especially inland river-bank moorings, beaches used for unloading, or
undeveloped creeks or havens used by smugglers or farmers. Predictive factors
such as the depth of rivers or the draught of watercraft (cited by Aston 1985,
140) are difficult to determine and date, and all manner of means, from lighters
to portage, were used to get to a destination if a vessel drew too much. Port

23
 activity in the past often lay well inland of the sea coast: just one example is Maritime
the Roman boat found at Barlands Farm in South Wales, which was built and Landscapes
equipped for sailing on the Severn Estuary (McGrail and Roberts 1999), though
it lay at least 3 km from the Roman period coastline (Allen and Rippon 1997,
356). Whether on the coast or inland, where there were built port features,
such as timber or stone waterfronts, encroachment (the extension of waterfronts
into the watercourse) or, in recent times, mechanised port facilities have
overbuilt or removed historic features on a massive scale; coastal havens, too,
have been overrun or transformed by housing and the structures for tourism
or retirement homes (Bayliss-Smith and Owens 1990, 231). Natural processes,
too, tend to transform the maritime landscape significantly: coastline erosion
may destroy whole ports, and, even where archaeological material can be
recognised (as at Magor Pill) the transforms are usually violent, and both
preservation and stratification of artefacts are uncontrolled (Allen and Rippon
1997). Though such destruction may be balanced elsewhere by good preserva-
tion in silted or sanded-up locations, the pattern of maritime occupation is
often a patchwork, with gaps. Below high-water mark, there are often archaeo-
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24
 A. J. Parker logical remains such as fishing installations, which are difficult to date, tend
to be repeatedly rebuilt, and may be impossible to relate to any nearby
settlement or even to other intertidal areas. This aspect of the maritime
landscape, while distinctive, is a further difficulty in its study.
In the sea, especially inshore, it is difficult to reconstruct past conditions as
experienced and surmounted by seamen: though weather conditions can no
doubt be assumed broadly to resemble those of the present day, other aspects
of the marine environment, such as relative sea-level, or the range and force
of the tides, may have changed beyond the possibility of reconstruction, or of
dating the changes. Such long-term processes interact with the effects of storms,
river silting, estuary enlargement, and human intervention, making further
difficulties for archaeological interpretation of maritime remains (Allen 1997).
The archaeology of sea transport and travel is one aspect of the study of
communications: on land, lines of communication may be marked out and
Figure 1.
preserved by roads and paths, but such lines are rarely to be found in the sea.
Changing technology
and changed Neither isolated losses (as in jetsam) nor assemblages (as in shipwrecks) are
perspectives: shipping frequently encountered or easily found, and the movements of ships, as traceable
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in the Avon Gorge by their wrecks, may bear no relation to their intended course, or to a regularly
near Bristol at the end travelled route, though for the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean the frequency of
of the nineteenth known shipwreck sites enables some conclusions about movements (Parker
century, as seen in a
photograph from the
1992, 19).
York Collection,
Bristol City Museums.
The long tradition of
Nodal points in the maritime landscape
navigating on the tidal The concept of ‘maritime culture‘ or even ‘maritime sub-cultures’ has been
Avon is seen in the
propounded by some writers (e.g. Muckelroy 1978). Awareness of, or interest
barge on the right,
which travels in, the sea, has been suggested as a social trait which might be discerned on
upstream on the flood the basis of archaeological remains; this concept has even been named ‘mari-
tide, using its sail and timity’. However, study of Muckelroy’s views has shown that categorical
long oars to steer and confusions render his definitions untenable (Parker 1995), and the concept of
position the boat. The ‘maritime culture’ has been succinctly set in its place by Hunter (1994, 262),
steel barque on the
left is under tow from
who writes: ‘Maritime components [of a society] are no more than extrusions
two tugs (one out of or reflections of the broader culture to which they belong, and are integral . . .’.
the picture), which What we are concerned with is specialisation within a society or community,
steam against the and there is no guarantee that specialised functions will leave traces in the
flood, ‘stemming the material culture record. Going to sea may be an occasional, temporary activity,
tide’, in order to
depending on other priorities or economic opportunities (as shown by Jenkins
achieve steerage way:
This reversal of the 1956), and leave no distinctive remains in settlements or burials.
traditional procedure Notwithstanding, one can recognise concentrations of maritime activity,
has, in the twentieth especially ports: Westerdahl (1994 and 1997) has termed these ‘maritime
century, become the enclaves’. These are to be expected at transition points between zones, for
usual way, and the transition points, as, for example, where a cargo has to be offloaded into boats
extreme ease and
efficiency of
to lighten a ship, tend to be urban in nature. It is, however, quite possible for
tide-assisted navigation ships to anchor in the lee of a headland, or for boats to row up a tidal river
have been forgotten. on the flood, without pausing or landing; while there may indeed be many

25
 nodal points in maritime landscapes, they are by no means identifiable in the Maritime
firm socio-economic terms proposed by Westerdahl, but rather will need, in Landscapes
many cases, to be reconstructed from routes and sailing conditions. For instance,
at the mouth of the River Avon below Bristol, ships requiring pilots, lighters
or a tow paused at the small settlement of Pill; but Pill, until very recent times,
had no parochial or manorial status and remained only a hamlet within a larger
rural parish (Parker 1999). This low status means that it is unlikely that such
settlements would be recognised as enclaves on archaeological evidence alone.
Furthermore, any specialisation by a community can be profoundly affected
by political or economic changes: ports such as Morwellham (Devon), well
inland on the tidal River Tamar, show a multiple cycle of development and
decline – vigorous, in the case of Morwellham, during the Middle Ages when Figure 2.
it served Tavistock Abbey, and again in the nineteenth century during a boom The articulation of
in local mining, but in between times dormant, and now a mere heritage water transport. From
a functional point of
attraction (Finberg 1952). Thus location and natural conditions are not sufficient
view, the maritime
to indicate a transition point, and material remains may not define an enclave. landscape can be
divided into zones,
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both along the coast

and also from coast
inland: these zones
often have
corresponding
traditions of
boat-types and
practices. Zone
boundaries are marked
by nodal points,
sometimes called
maritime enclaves,
where goods had to
be transhipped, a pilot
taken aboard, or
supplementary
propulsion arranged.
The approach of a
ship from the broad
expanse of the ocean
towards the
increasingly
constricted water of a
harbour or river-port
is marked out and
constrained by both
natural and man-made
features, and it is the
seaman’s perception of
this through the ages
that constitutes the
historical maritime
landscape.

26
 A. J. Parker The transhipment of goods, at sand-bars, weirs, rapids or rock-barriers, was
always an important feature of nautical trade. A similar transition lies at the
change from seagoing to river navigation: sea-going ships need to be large and
deep-keeled, while river boats have to be flat-bottomed and of shallow draft.
Unfortunately there is overlap: seagoing ships regularly proceeded upstream to
Bristol, Gloucester or even higher, while river barges such as Thames barges
could, if necessary, carry out lengthy coastal voyages. The situation is too
complicated for a general model to be built.
The difficulty of recognising a specialised community archaeologically has
been emphasized by Dark (1995 126–9). A coastal location does not in itself
indicate the status or function of a site; a port might be a place for landing
people (such as pilgrims), not goods, or be involved in fishing but not maritime
trade (so that assemblages of material from such a site might contain no
significant indications of overseas contacts). Even if one can identify the
presence of nautical specialists in a community, this need not characterise the
community as a whole, for (to cite Dark 1995, 135–7) the special services of
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Figure 3.
A settlement in its
landscape: a new
version of a diagram
by Mick Aston (1985),
to include use of
water. The extent to
which seafaring and
navigation are
specialised functions
in a community is
difficult to establish,
and may leave no
archaeological trace;
none the less, no
study of a settlement
in context can ignore
communications or
the exploitation of
water resources.

27
 such as fishermen may just be part of the local subsistence economy, or one Maritime
component in the services which the community requires. Landscapes
Maritime specialisation is, in fact, rarely identifiable until relatively recent
centuries, and then in particular instances. Such a case is Dartmouth (Devon)
from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century. Dartmouth has a good harbour,
sheltered and with deep-water moorings, albeit often difficult to enter or leave
under square sail, but its hinterland, apart from tin exported from Dartmoor
via Totnes, was poor. ‘Dartmouth’s commercial hinterland was particularly
small,’ writes Kowaleski (1992): like Plymouth, Dartmouth had ‘a remarkable
pull, a greater maritime orientation’. Especially as Totnes (higher up the River
Dart) became more difficult to reach, Dartmouth became a prominent port,
and, by 1377, 25 percent of Dartmouth’s householders took part in overseas
commerce. This specialisation continued into the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, when the extensive reclamation and building projects which trans-
formed the town were capitalised from fishing and maritime trade, and,
according to Gray (1992, 176), ‘it was the maritime character of Dartmouth
which distinguished it from many other English boroughs’. So, although one
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might recognize Dartmouth as a specialist enclave, it can scarcely be taken as

a representative of a numerous class of settlement. Nevertheless, it is clear that
some kind of structure must be discernible in the maritime landscape, and this
will be the subject of the rest of this paper.

Models
‘Because of the complexity of the landscape,’ writes Aston (1985, 154), ‘we need
a model on which to base, what we already know . . . and to structure our
future research.’ Such models have, inevitably, been based on an inland
agricultural settlement, and thus been either a linear strip or transect (as Aston
1985, fig. 92) or a circular territory (Aston, 1985, figs 1 and 59). Where the size
or the distance away of neighbouring settlements is used to ‘weight’ a model,
this still results in a plan plot of the focal settlement and the surrounding
blocks of land (Aston 1985, figs 51 and 52). However, from the earliest days of
British landscape archaeology, links and communications have also been taken
into account (Aston and Rowley 1974, 119), and communications, whether
intra-territorial, local or regional, are included in what one may call the rich
picture of ‘a settlement in its landscape’ (Aston 1985, fig. 93). Although the
measurement and modelling of communications are vital in geographical
studies, at least of the modern world (Garner 1967, 304), it is not clear how
this is to be done archaeologically.
The importance of water transport is certainly prominent in Aston’s study
(1985, 11). ‘Roads, tracks, rivers and the small harbours and ports on rivers,
estuaries and the coast were vital for moving goods about in the past.’ As far
as river trade is concerned, parameters for its reconstruction are set by the size
and draft of boats at different periods, and by changes in river silting or water
flow (Aston 1985, 140). For the sea, where ‘as well as a host of river jetties and

28
 A. J. Parker transhipment points, almost any small cove, beach or inlet around the coast
would have been used in earlier times for the loading and unloading of goods’,
parameters for ship or cargo size at different periods can be inferred from
remains of excavated quays or jetties. The distribution of artefacts can also
provide a model for transport links, though, when it comes to the routes
themselves, neither ridgeways, roads, river navigations nor coastal voyages can
be dated by excavation (Aston 1985, 144). The extent to which artefact dis-
tributions can stand proxy for transport links is debatable, though such
information can certainly be used to posit transport links and stimulate the
search for other evidence.
A difficulty for landscape archaeology and the design of maritime models is
the relatively undeveloped nature of conceptual mapping (pointed out by Dark
1995, 167–8). It is a truism that, at least for bulk cargoes or indivisible loads,
water transport is immensely cheaper and more convenient than land, until
the development of railways (e.g. Peacock and Williams 1986, 63–6): when cost
is taken into account, therefore, places linked by sea-routes are closer than
places linked by land. Travel by water often requires less energy than land
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travel, and may be much quicker: the links of eastern England with other
regions round the North Sea are therefore close, even though they are separated
by a considerable distance topographically (Carver 1990). The modelling of
sea-transport links would thus involve the topographic distortions of conceptual
mapping, whereas the landscape archaeology of settlements has traditionally
been based on two-dimensional cartographic overlays. Even distribution of
artefacts should, for this purpose, be plotted on a scale of dispersal which takes
ease of movement or economic forces into account as a weighting factor. The
alternative is to restrict the representation of transport links to a merely token
systematic input or output. This would produce an incomplete view of the
activity of a port settlement.

Urban landscape development

The historic landscape of an ancient port tends to be obscured by successive
uses and developments, or, if the port has been abandoned, by reuse. The
general trend for the development of ports is, initially, discharge on to a beach,
hard, creek-margin or common open space: this tends to be one side of a
market-place, overlooked by a church in the early Middle Ages; later, encroach-
ment by individual quays or houses, with unloading direct; then, further
encroachment to create a common, deep-water quay frontage, with discharge
into carts or sledges; finally, the construction of warehouses or transit sheds
close to the water’s edge for commercially organised and often mechanised
transhipment. This ‘portuary landscape’, as seen, for instance, at King’s Lynn,
can normally be recovered only by excavation; the paraphernalia of industrial
docksides – bollards, rail lines, cranes, sheds, walled enclosures, basins, dry
docks, canal junctions – for the most part have no parallel in early periods.
The development of the port may sometimes be discerned in the street plan,

29
Downloaded by [University of Georgia] at 03:43 02 April 2016

where the original beach line can survive as a sinuous street, parallel with the Figure 4.
later waterfront (Schofield 1999). The sequence may also be truncated by site Poole Harbour and
Studland Bay, Dorset.
migration, a relatively frequent occurrence (cf. Westerdahl 1995). Migration is Ports and other nodal
not necessarily simple: in Poole Harbour, for instance, the low peninsula on points of maritime
which Wareham is positioned was occupied from Mesolithic times right activity have a marked
through to today, but at the time of the Roman conquest of  43 a base-port tendency to migrate,
was established at Hamworthy, with better seaward and inland access; after the according to changes
of the environment or
Roman period, however, it was Wareham which survived as a settlement and
of economic or
grew into a port, by the eleventh century if not before, only to lose much of political conditions.
its trade to the new port of Poole during the Middle Ages; in modern times, Wareham, Poole and
commercial traffic operates from new deep-water berths at Hamworthy, and Hamworthy have
both Poole Quay and Wareham serve only pleasure craft. occupied the main
At Dartmouth, as elsewhere, encroachment was associated with a migration port role in this area
at different periods.
seawards of key elements of the settlement. In the built environment, this made The approach from
formal the changes which were involved in the increased specialisation on the open sea to Poole
shipping about which remark has already been made. However, the map of Harbour, studded
Dartmouth serves to illustrate a complicating factor in port landscapes, namely with wreck sites
dispersal of habitation and work. Thus (in the seventeenth century, anyway) including the
sixteenth-century
merchants and ships’ captains lived across the harbour at Kingswear or Churston
Studland Bay wreck,
Ferrers, upstream at Dittisham, or even at Totnes, fifteen km upriver. Similar is an example of the
dispersed habitation was the pattern in other drowned-valley ports such as ‘closing zone’ which
Plymouth, or estuaries such as Exmouth. In some cases, a substantial seaside often lies outside ports.
settlement could house persons connected with the sea who worked out of a
different coast, as at Portscatho (Cornwall). The village is overlooked by a row
of handsome nineteenth century villas which were, for the most part, the
property of merchant ship captains who, benefiting from the telegraph and the
railway, sailed out of Falmouth, Britain’s most south-westerly large port.

30
 A. J. Parker

Figure 5.
The sheltered,
deep-water harbour of
Dartmouth (Devon)
became a specialised
shipping centre in the
Middle Ages.
Although the narrow
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entrance is difficult for

square-rigged ships,
the River Dart
provides access to
Totnes. Medieval and
modern activity was
concentrated in the
settlement of
Dartmouth, which
developed on the
water’s edge during
the Middle Ages and
successively
encroached on the
river; many of the
port’s seamen,
however, lived in
satellite settlements
up-river.

Although they invested in the local pilchard-fishing industry (whose products

they often carried abroad in their ships), these seamen travelled overland to
Percuil or thence (by ferry) to Falmouth to board their ship. The affluence of
their houses is thus not a direct reflection of the economy of Portscatho. It
follows that the relationship between settlement topography and economic or
social history may, in the maritime context, be complicated, and very likely
needs to be analysed afresh at each place. Furthermore, since there is no
guaranteed correspondence between form and function at settlements (as at
Portscatho), interpretation depends on models which are historically derived.
In turn this means that in general landscape studies of rural coastlines the
construction of the historic landscape is reliable only from the period of
historical information, as Haywood (1997) emphasizes.

31
Downloaded by [University of Georgia] at 03:43 02 April 2016

Figure 6. Map of the

The maritime perspective Falmouth–Veryan area
(Cornwall). There is
It is recognised by specialists in landscape archaeology that, in place of formal only an indirect
or topographic analysis, visualisation of ancient landscapes may be the best relationship between
way to recreate communications and transport activities: ‘visual pictures, and the main port
thinking oneself into the functioning of landscapes, is essential if any true (Falmouth), ship
understanding is to be achieved’ (Aston 1985, 109). The seaman’s perspective building (Mylar and
Percuil) and the
must be a principal target of maritime archaeological reconstruction.
habitation
The open sea is, in good weather, safer than the inshore zone: the mariner (Portscatho) of some
can move freely in two directions, without constraints of water-depth or of the skippers who
obstructions. It is, therefore, to be expected that prehistoric boatmen were sailed from Falmouth.
ready to follow shoals of fish or rumours of distant land over the horizon, The bay of Portscatho
rapidly becoming accustomed to the freedom of open-sea sailing. The sea is is overlooked by
prominent tumuli and
not formless or featureless: even in deep water, a ship’s position and direction is celebrated in
can be gauged from the sun, the ocean swell, flotsam, sea-birds, clouds on the folklore as the setting
horizon, etc. In lower latitudes, the clear skies of summer nights provide, in for a royal funeral.
the stars, a two-dimensional map by which to position oneself and steer. How

32
 A. J. Parker near the land may be can be judged from distant clouds, by releasing doves
or from the behaviour of a monkey carried on board to keep watch for land.
The greatest hazard for a seafarer, apart from overwhelmingly violent storms,
is making landfall unexpectedly, or out of control. Coral reefs or low-lying
coasts may take a ship by surprise; for this reason, some of the oldest and
tallest seamarks, such as the Pharos of Alexandria, were erected to provide a
landfall for ships approaching a low, featureless coast. The south-west gateway
to the English Channel is at the 100-fathom (183 m) depth line: here, the colour
of the sea changes (Admiralty, 1922, 1–3, etc.). This point has been known
since the late Middle Ages (if not earlier) as ‘soundings’, for it is the cue to
start sounding – not so much to take the depth, this far out, but to sample
the seabed composition; arming the sounding lead with a sticky substance was
practised from ancient times. Different bottom materials will be brought up,
according to route – the Pilot (cit.), for instance, observes that the occurrence
of dark red sand from a bottom at less than fifty fathoms is ‘said to be the
special indication of an approach to the Bristol Channel’. The allusion to oral
tradition here reminds us that such knowledge did not depend on official survey
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and publications but was for centuries transmitted by word of mouth; it is,
therefore, not surprising to find in the earliest English Sailing Directions, of
the fifteenth century, precise indications of how to navigate through the rocks
and shoals of Finisterre on the basis of the colour and texture of bottom
materials (Lester 1994). This shows how there is indeed an underwater landscape
of which sailors have knowledge, albeit indirect, and which serves to indicate
their position and articulate their voyage.
Fishermen, too, even in early times will have formed a mental map of the
seabed. ‘The lore of fishing,’ according to Thompson (1995, 62), ‘was passed
down the generations, together with an intimate knowledge of the seabed for
miles around. The men were as familiar with the sea bottom as a farmer with
his fields. They knew the shallows and deeps, rock and sand, the gullies or
“drangs”. The best locations for the various forms of fishing were known by
the lining up of conspicuous points ashore, establishing cross transits. Never
written down, these marks were jealously guarded and passed from father to
son.’ Fishing grounds were by no means always in sight of land, or so directly
identifiable: from 1607 to 1610 there was a dispute between fishermen of Rye
(Sussex) and French fishermen concerning herring and cod grounds which were
traditionally the preserve of the Ryers – ‘The dispute,’ comments Dulley (1969),
‘was complicated by lack of agreement about the location of the Sow and the
Black Smooth, the grounds in question, which appear to have been somewhere
in mid-Channel’. Rocks, shoals and banks, even when permanently submerged
and out of sight of the coast, may be marked by buoys, beacons or withies,
planted by the seamen themselves, by their relatives or friends (as recounted
by Eglinton 1982 and 1990), or (increasingly from the end of the Middle Ages,
of course) by state or communal organisations. However, especially when shoals
are so shallow as to dry out at low tide, only a mental map will provide the
mariner or his pilot with a safe route – cf. Admiralty (1922, 239), ‘The approach

33
 to this portion of the coast is only possible with local knowledge, and when Maritime
the state of the tide permits a passage over the numerous shallow banks.’ Landscapes
Out at sea, the early mariner may have gauged his position on some sort of
mental or drawn plan, related to the night sky or even the sun’s daily course.
As he approached the land, however, his view would become serial, with
waypoints ahead and landmarks to either side, as recorded in the pilot books
or ‘rutters’, which act as a kind of manual on how to get there, not as charts
to pore over, and which seem to have been developed in the Middle Ages
Figure 7. Outlines of
landmarks, after Pierre
Garcie Le grant
routtier, first published
1520: (a) Portland Bill
(b) Start Point (c) Île
d’Yeu, Les Chiens
Perrins and Punta du
Butte. To this day the
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Admiralty Pilot Books

specifically mention
the characteristic
wedge shape of
Portland Bill and the
coxcomb-like
appearance of Start
Point: the ‘prospects’
recorded by Garcie
show that these
characteristic shapes
were known by sailors
in the fifteenth
century, and, no
doubt, long before
that. On l’Île d’Yeu,
Garcie himself gives
an indication of
distance off by
advising the seaman to
be sure to have the
bell-tower of the
church in full view,
rather than the land
round about.

34
 A. J. Parker (Waters 1967). In a serial system of guidance, it is natural for some features of
the marine landscape to be noted down, not cartographically, but in tabular
or formulaic format: although the general pattern of tides for stated ports can
be inferred from the state of the moon, and knowledge of the timing and
direction of tidal currents is vital for much coastal navigation, it is where cargo
ships need clearance, especially over sand bars or rocky sills at the entrance to
harbours or docks, that accurate predictions of the tides are necessary, and
these are most conveniently noted down in tables, also known to have existed
at least from the thirteenth century (Dyson 1996). Such tabular summaries of
geography can only indirectly be applied to normal topographic cartography.
Guided by features of the sea and by knowledge of currents and tides, the
mariner approaching land looks out for a landfall; if it is dark, like St Paul’s
companions (Acts xxvii, 29), he prays for daylight. Mountains, especially with
their crown of cloud, are excellent landfalls, often venerated with a shrine and
seafarers’ offerings; in Britain, ancient geographers knew of a Promontorium
Herculis in the Bristol Channel area, perhaps the steep, rocky Hartland Point
(Devon), and distinguished among Romano-British placenames by its classical
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name, no doubt as it was known to visiting sailors (though ‘Hercules’ may

stand for a native deity). To identify landfalls, mariners, from Medieval times
on, if not before, have used prospects – sketches of the coastline as seen from
the sea (Waters 1967). These give the outline of distinctive landscape features,
often natural, but also incorporating buildings as well as unusually-shaped hills
and prominent clumps of trees.
To some extent, this maritime landscape is different from the landsman’s.
The names given to landmarks by sailors may be different – as, for example,
‘See Me Not’, the seaman’s name for Crook’s Peak in the western Mendip
Hills of Somerset. The landmarks also serve distinctive technical functions for
the seaman: not only do pilot books give compass bearings to features as a
guide to position, they also offer clearing lines or transits, alignments of nearer
and further points in view, which, when passed, permit a ship to turn in
towards port or head off in another direction after passing a hazard. Thus
‘Brent Knoll in line with the east side of Steep Holm, bearing 133°, leads
south-west of the Mackenzie Shoal’ (Admiralty, 1922). Another important use
of landmarks is to give a distance off from land; mariners need to ensure that
prominent buildings are not obscured by high ground on the coast, as off Île
d’Yeu in the medieval rutter (Figure 7) or off Margate in North Kent (Marsden
1996, 34).
While there may well have been changes in shoals and navigable channels
since antiquity, in general terms one can see that these prospects and natural
landmarks could have been in use from earliest times. Even when a building
is cited in a transit, it rarely seems that it was purposely erected in a position
to serve as a guide to seamen. The church towers of the Somerset coast, for
instance, cannot be formed into any such scheme; nor are there sufficient
references to burial mounds, or other man-made features, to support the
suggestion that these were positioned so as to provide pilotage reference points.

35
 On the other hand, some coastal landmarks have certainly been erected to Maritime
guide ships, especially where a reference point is needed on a coast which is Landscapes
difficult to ‘read’ from out at sea, or where one landmark has to be distinguished
from another (Admiralty, 1922, 529). In medieval Europe, landmark structures
were quite frequently chapels or hermitages. Such, for example, are St Michael’s
Chapel, Rame Head, on the western side of Plymouth Sound (Nenk, Margeson
and Hurley 1994, 199), or St Nicholas’ Chapel at Ilfracombe, perched on the
rocky headland at the harbour entrance (Cherry 1989), which served as watch-
houses, and also lit a beacon or light at night, thus being the forerunners of
lighthouses. This dedication of headlands and islets to saints in the Middle
Ages, and the devotion to them of religious persons, may be an echo of older
traditions (cf. on Hartland Point, above).
The progress of a ship towards port might be interrupted by darkness, fog,
contrary winds or foul tides; then a suitable anchorage or haven has to be
found. In the Bristol Channel is the classic anchorage of Lundy Island, a vital
sheltering-place in westerly gales and a key waypoint on the approach to Bristol
(Admiralty, 1922, 30 and 76–81). The island, the rocks and the seagrounds
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round it are fully described in the Pilot, suggesting the long tradition of
anchoring there which goes back certainly to the thirteenth century, when the
lords of the island, the Marisco family, succeeded in controlling the seaborne
trade of Bristol (Oppenheim 1968, 6). Even in good weather, sailing ships may
need to await a change of wind in order to round a headland, or, in tidal
waters, anchor out in the channel to await the next favourable tide. Thus, the
approach to Bristol is punctuated by anchorages at Walton Bay, Hollowbacks
or King Road before the final ascent of the Bristol Avon.
The final approach to a port involves a progressive closure of the room
available for a ship to manoeuvre, especially as not only rocks and sandbanks
but also fishing-stakes or moored fishing-nets crowd in on the navigable channel.
Tomalin (1998) has written of an ‘apron’ of wrecks and other debris in the
approach to a harbour, for instance, in Studland Bay on the approach to Poole,
and has taken this as a token of the increased hazard of approaching the harbour
entrance (Figure 4). In fog or darkness, the coast may be unseen till too late:
the shouts of seamen or the cries of seabirds reflected from the cliff, the smell
of smoke, of farm animals or of mown crops from the land, may have been
all that served early mariners for a warning. In good conditions, on the other
hand, distinctive natural or built landmarks serve as a guide, and sometimes a
daymark visible from well off the land serves as a point on which to steer; at
Dartmouth (Figure 5) the daymark, a tall column, is said to stand on the site
of a medieval chapel.
All the above hazards, of course, when conditions are good, provide the
seaman with confirmation of his position and enable his progress towards the
destination to be measured. Customary occurrences, too, play a part in the
scene: fishing-boats tend to be anchored on regular fishing grounds, coasters
cross one’s course on their regular routes inshore, and boats put out to meet
the new arrival. Here the seaman encounters a transition point, where pilots

36
 Figure 8. and tugmen (‘hobblers’) put out from their stations at the mouth of an estuary
Clearing line: Brent or river, normally where there is a difficult bar to cross (cf. Figure 2). Such
Knoll and Steep
helpers provide local knowledge, essential not only in shoal waters off the coast,
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Holm, on the north

Somerset coast (after but also vital to predict the depth of water on a bar, such as that at the mouth
Admiralty, 1922, 122). of the Exe, at the particular state of the tide and of river-flow at the time in
The transits (lines of question. Many channels within the river, such as the Exe from Exmouth to
sight) between Topsham, change their course between shifting sands, and up-to-date local
landmarks enable
knowledge is essential there, too, to make a safe passage.
seamen to measure
their position and Finally, the arriving ship salutes, pays vows, greets a welcoming shore party,
steer round hazards – and comes to rest in the close embrace of the port. Her progress may be marked
here, the left-hand symbolically and ceremonially at a range of places, for the symbolic aspects of
(eastern) side of Steep the organisation of space or the arrangement of buildings apply equally to
Holm island in line waterways as to land-routes (Parker 1999). The control of access by rulers is a
with the summit of
Brent Knoll (on the
feature of the landscape which applies especially to waterborne communications:
Somerset mainland) rulers like to control, not only goods, but also knowledge or even persons
leads south-west of coming from distant parts, so the organisation of quaysides and waterfront
the Mackenzie Shoal, open spaces may be expected to reflect attitudes to exploration or distant trading
a hazard to shipping ventures. As the case of medieval Bristol shows, however, these arrangements
in the Bristol Channel.
are by no means self-evident and normally require some input from comparative
sources for their full explanation.

The cultural landscape

Going to sea is never merely an economic or practical action. In modern
industrial societies, the sea air and novel surroundings provide a leisure outlet;
in earlier periods, men set out to seek their fortune and experience exotic
scenery and customs in distant parts; in simple communities, to join a fishing
or trading expedition was a socially integrating activity, a test of a young man’s
daring and sense of community. There must, therefore, in many communities
have been an attitude to the sea, held not just by specialist seamen but in the
folklore and customs of the whole community. Modern archaeologists differ

37
 in their view of what this attitude might have been in early periods (as is well Maritime
discussed by Wooding 1996): some, especially prehistorians, regard the sea as Landscapes
a conceptual barrier, a mysterious and frightening enemy with which primitive
resources of technology, organisation or courage could not engage; others, such
as Crawford (quoted by Wooding), saw even the sea around the west of Britain
as ‘grey waters bright with argonauts’. The latter view, namely that seagoing
is a natural and normal activity, especially for particular societies, can even be
expressed in jargon such as ‘maritime consciousness’ and invoked as a hypo-
thetical explanation for the development of seaborne contact, for example in
the Mediterranean Late Bronze Age. The same is implicit in the suggestion of
Westerdahl (1997) that to the prehistoric world view of agrios and domus should
be added the term mare – that is to say, one should expect to find symbolic
labels on early settlements, structures or artefacts which would reflect a con-
struction of the world divided between home, abroad, and, indeed, at sea.
While such concepts of maritime awareness are stimulating and important, for
the most part one has to recognise that it is not so much ‘maritime conscious-
ness’, as the demand of economic or social factors, which induce a seafaring
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response: it is the search for raw materials, or for additional land, which
ultimately provides the impetus for seaborne exploration, and well-documented
cases show that technological and spiritual competence responds to meet the
need (Richards 1999, 207).
The sea has been widely held to be divine, or the abode of one or more
gods, and it features in creation and other myths. Offerings to the sea are
made, not only to propitiate its wilder moods, but as a component of a society’s
ritual activities. Embedded in this, however, may be the control of economic
or social forces, and, in particular, the demonstration by individuals or groups
of their ability to travel to distant places and bring back goods and knowledge.
Such an idea, according to Bradley (1997a), can be seen in some kinds of rock
art: before the period of fixed settlement (or, indeed, of specialised trading
towns) territory was marked, not only by field-boundaries, town walls or linear
earthworks, but by signs – ‘notched trees, stone cairns, buoys, etc.’ – set down
on land or in the sea, to be ‘read’ by strangers and competitors. For prehistory,
such markers are often ‘specialised monuments devoted to the dead’: burial
mounds may thus demarcate or point to routes of transhumance or festal
assembly, and in doing so focus the attention of a stranger on the territory
which he approaches. The sea is often in view in these contexts – at Tanum
(Sweden), for example, fields of rock-engraved boats lie close to cairns which
were prominently sited above what was a navigable fjord in the Bronze Age.
It may be (as Bradley (1997b) suggests) that the boats do not represent actual
craft but allude symbolically to the waters nearby.
In Cornwall, at Carne Beacon (Veryan) a very large tumulus stands promi-
nently, overlooking Gerrans Bay; it is clearly seen on the skyline from Portscatho
(cf. Figure 6). The tumulus, whose date is uncertain, is associated in folklore
with King Gerrans being rowed across the bay to his funeral. Closer to
Portscatho is the hamlet of Curgurell, its name said to derive from Crukelgorhel,

38
 A. J. Parker ‘ship barrow’; near the shore is a mound, known as Roundhouse, which may
be a barrow (Thompson 1994, 41). This is just one example of a conjunction
of a port settlement, a fish-rich bay, and funerary markers overlooking the sea.
Elsewhere, as for example on the high ground of Uphill (Somerset), now
marked by the derelict Uphill Old Church, among the complex earthworks
are very probably more than one round barrow: a cemetery here would be a
forceful demarcation of the creek of Uphill, at the western end of the Mendip
Hills, and the mouth of the Somerset Axe river.
In later periods, the association of burial mounds with the sea is often explicit.
On the Isle of Man, for instance, ‘the graves of first-generation Viking settlers . . .
were frequently marked by coastal mounds that would have been visible from
the sea’; at Balladoole, a ship-shaped stone cairn, containing two burials, was
built over an eleven-metre long boat, its outline represented by hundreds of
clench nails (Richards 1999, 198). Indeed, as Hunter (1994, 264), remarks, ‘the
importance of the sea as a route for transport, and the mystery which the sea
itself provides, together serve to create a major cultural symbol. In Beowulf, it
was not without good reason that the body of Scyld was sent by boat out into
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the unknown . . . nor that Beowulf ’s cenotaph was built in a prominent position
that made it visible from far out at sea.’

Conclusion
An appreciation of the maritime aspects of the historic landscape requires
archaeologists to adopt a mariner’s perspective, in which the sky, the sea, the
seabed, seamarks and landmarks articulate navigation, pilotage and safe arrival
in port. The models for reconstructing this perspective can be based on the
procedures of working ships and transferring cargoes, on the development of
port facilities and settlements, on the recognition of landmarks and the con-
tinuity of local practice and traditions, and on an awareness of the place of
mare, the sea, in the conceptual world of earlier periods and their ritual
landscapes. The archaeology of communications may be less tangible and more
complicated than the archaeology of agriculture or armed domination, but it
does exist and (as Cederlund 1995, 103, has emphasized) should have a central
position in the study of the past.

Acknowledgements
Unpublished communications were kindly supplied by C. Westerdahl. The
paper was read in draft form by M. Aston, for whose encouragement the author
is grateful. Figures 2, 4, 5 and 6 were drawn by Susan Grice.

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41