Sentient Seas: Archaeologies of Seascapes and Maritime Rituals

By Ian J. McNiven

A novel cross-cultural exploration of how maritime
peoples have engaged with the sea through cosmology,
spirituality, and ritual

Sentient Seas offers a global perspective on maritime cultures,
examining how societies across time and space have understood and interacted
with the sea. Synthesizing archaeological evidence, historical documents, and
ethnographic accounts, Ian McNiven explores maritime traditions from ancient
civilizations in the Middle East and Mediterranean to medieval Europe and
Scandinavia to contemporary Indigenous communities in the South Pacific.

McNiven
investigates diverse cultural practices including shipbuilding, the treatment
of shipwrecks and shipwreck victims, and maritime resource use, interpreting
the evidence through the perspectives of mariners who understood the seas to be
sentient and capable of acting with intentionality. He introduces the concepts
of "terrestrial seascapes" and "ontological switching" to illustrate how
land-based shrines and votive offerings extend maritime cosmologies and maintain
a liminal transition from land to sea. By bridging anthropological and
archaeological research with transdisciplinary blue humanities scholarship,
Sentient Seas approaches seas as spiritscapes, recontextualizing folkloric
beliefs about maritime superstitions.

A volume in the series Society and Ecology in Island and Coastal
Archaeology, edited by Victor D. Thompson and Scott M. Fitzpatrick

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813081548
• ISBN13: 9780813081540
• Release Date: March 2026
• Publisher: University Press of Florida
• Length: 530 Pages