Sentient Seas, livre ebook

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 Synthesizing archaeological evidence, historical documents, and ethnographic accounts, Ian McNiven explores maritime traditions from ancient civilizations in the Middle East and Mediterranean to medieval Europe and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.

List of Figures

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: Seascape Awakenings

2. Cosmological Edges of the Sea

3. Cosmological Beings of the Sea

4. Emplaced Seascapes: Marking the Sea

5. Terrestrial Seascapes: Inland Referencing of the Sea

6. Rituals of Ship Construction and Destruction: Embodiment to Predatorization

7. Rituals of Voyaging and Mishap: Seafaring on Land and at Sea

8. Sentient Elements: Agentive Tides, Waves, and Winds

9. Sentient Prey: Hunting with Agentive Skulls and Technology

10. Sentient Stock: Fishing with Agentive Bones and Technology

11. Why So Many Maritime Rituals?

12. Summary and Conclusions

References

Index