1st Honor Frost Archive Fellowship- Max MacDonald
Max MacDonald- Photo by Dr Florian Huber
The HFF is pleased to announce our first Archive Fellow, Max MacDonald. Max will be working with the Maritime Archaeology Special Collections at the University of Southampton Library to conduct research on a topic centred on the collection, which includes the archive of Honor Frost. As well as research, Max will be delivering a seminar at the University of Southampton on his topic. He write:
“The goal of my work with the Maritime Archaeological Archives is to collate all of the information about maritime archaeology in Greece into a database. I am particularly interested in the ports and harbours of Greece and the Aegean in Prehistory, which were also of interest to Honor Frost and Nic Flemming. The archives contain information about ancient harbours and how they have changed over time. This research complements my doctoral thesis, as I investigated the human relationship with the sea in Bronze Age Greece. I found that coastal communities had been overlooked in the archaeological record, and that Honor Frost and Nic Flemming were some of the earliest scholars to actively search for evidence of Bronze Age harbours and coastal infrastructure in Greece.
My investigation into the Maritime Archaeological Archives offers an opportunity to reveal the history of maritime archaeology in the Aegean and to refocus the spotlight on the archaeology of Greek coastlines. Honor Frost was a pioneer of underwater and maritime archaeology. She worked on Crete and spent time on the Greek mainland. Her short discussions of the ancient Greek coastline in Under the Mediterranean (1963: 99-114) reveal much about relatively unknown aspects of Greek maritime archaeology and offer insights into the state of those sites in the mid-twentieth century, many of which are no doubt lost today. For example, she participated in underwater investigations at the Minoan harbour-town of Mochlos in East Crete in 1955, which is still subject to ongoing excavation. The archives can help shed light on the history of investigations here and provide new information on the changing coastline. Nic Flemming’s work on sea-level change led him to investigate many potential coastal archaeological sites along the Greek coast; delving into his archives will reveal a wealth of obscure and unpublished information which could contribute to an overall better understanding of harbours and coastal communities in the ancient Greek landscape.
The Maritime Archaeological Archives hold valuable knowledge about Greek maritime culture, ancient and modern, that has not received enough attention from scholars working in Greece today. This research provides an important contribution to the maritime and coastal archaeology of Greece through the exploration of the history of investigations and the collation of unpublished and raw data, and it will also increase the accessibility of this information.”
