Modelling the maritime cultural landscape of the Costiera Amalfitana: the first three seasons of research (2016–2018)

Abstract

Human activity along the Amalfi coastline in Italy has been tied to the sea for millennia – for sustenance, migration, trade, warfare, and leisure. As a result, this region has an equally rich and extensive maritime cultural landscape composed of tangible and intangible elements. In 2016, a multi-disciplinary project began efforts to model and to understand changes within this landscape, and this essay presents the preliminary results of our first three seasons of work. Some efforts, such as the documentation of maritime cultural heritage in local museums, archival work, and geomorphological research proceeded smoothly. Unexpectedly, however, little material from the pre-modern era was found under water, adding questions to this study that future work in the Marine Protected Area west of Positano may answer.