Under the Mediterranean II Conference
Start: Wednesday 2nd November 2022
End: Sunday 6th November 2022
Location: University of Malta
Following the success of the 2017 ‘Under the Mediterranean’ event, the ‘Under the Mediterranean II’ conference will take place at the University of Malta between 2nd - 6th November 2022.
This conference invites expert speakers from a wide range of topics, including ship construction, harbours and maritime cultural landscapes, and maritime connectivity in the ancient world for the purposes of exchanging knowledge and further promoting advancement and research, with special attention paid to the Eastern Mediterranean. The conference will consist of key themes and report sessions with a particular focus on Frost’s connection to the island, in connection to the ‘Honor Frost foundation’.
As part of this event, there will be an opportunity to learn about the Malta Maritime Museum, including an excursion to the Phoenician Shipwreck Project exhibition which highlights new discoveries from an innovative underwater project.
Key themes
- Integrated Management of Maritime and Underwater Cultural Heritage in the Context of the UN Ocean Decade
- Phoenician and Punic Seafaring
- Cargo Assemblages: New Documentation and Interpretation Approaches
Report sessions
- Maritime cultural landscapes
- Maritime iconography
- History of the discipline
- Shipwrecks and Shipbuilding
- Science from the deep
Iliad Participation
Iliad partners and maritime archaeologists Dr Ehud Arkin Shalev and Dr Ehud Galili will be presenting their work in the Iliad Digitial Twins of the Ocean (DTO) project.
Ehud Arkin Shalev and Ehud Galili are members of the University of Haifa research group. Their goal within the Iliad project is the creation of a GIS-based digital database of over 500 maritime and coastal archaeological sites.
Their focus is on the coast of Israel. This section of the Eastern Mediterranean littoral has come under extreme anthropogenic and naturogenic pressures due to rising demands for development, residential construction, infrastructure, sand extraction, and more.
This has created an urgent need for the safeguarding, conservation, and preservation of the area’s diverse coastal and marine cultural heritage. To enable this, they aim to provide readily attainable information to public institutions, academic bodies, government authorities, and private firms. Their data stems from the results of five decades of underwater surveys, which have uncovered submerged settlements, harbours and anchorages, shipwrecks, coastal installations, as well as modern marine heritage sites.
Once integrated within the Iliad DTO, the database will provide a crucial digital resource for research, planning, public outreach, and heritage conservation, ensuring the continued safeguarding of the eastern Mediterranean’s maritime cultural resources.
