Anthropology of Seafaring

The anthropology of seafaring is the ethnographic and archaeological study of maritime communities: their navigation knowledge, boatbuilding, fishing economies, ritual, and relationship to the sea. It draws on fieldwork in fishing villages and island societies and on reconstructed wayfinding, such as Polynesian non-instrument navigation revived by the Hokule’a from 1976. Practitioners distinguish maritime anthropology (living communities) from maritime archaeology (material remains). The subfield treats boats as cultural artifacts and seafaring as a learned, transmitted skill rather than a purely technical practice.