The project aim is to write a book summarizing our investigative experiences of more than 30 years of maritime archaeological research. The concept grew out of the book Östersjöns sjunkna skepp- en marinarkeologisk tidsresa, which we published in 1994. Since that book was written however, much more source material has been added through new discoveries and new field projects, including those made by ourselves. We are now also well-established senior academics and have published several other studies within the discipline.

Whereas Östersjöns sjunkna skepp was primarily a popular science book in Swedish, our new book has a more academic focus in which our current view of ship archaeology as a subject and its potential as a human- and social research perspective is developed. The new book will be in English and will be directed primarily towards an academic (and student) audience. The source material will, as in our first book, be primarily from the Baltic Sea although we have also included significant wreck sites that we have investigated from the Atlantic, North Sea and Black Sea.

Work on the new book has progressed as planned during 2017. However, some revision of content and focus has taken place. Our previous book was based on a selection of ten different shipwrecks we had documented underwater, each one the subject of its own chapter written from a different perspective. The new book is still based primarily on wrecks we have investigated but this time we have grouped the wrecks thematically. The chapters include the Middle Ages, the transition to the New Age, the 16th and 17th century great warships, the new global merchant ships and the final era of the sailing ship in the 19th century.

A relevant theoretical theme in the new publication is the consideration of active role of ships as material culture. This connects to a trend increasingly visible over the last ten years arguing in a supposedly new way for the importance of material culture and ‘things’ in the understanding of societies. This discussion, known sometimes as the “material turn”, has not just occurred in the subject of archaeology but even more so in several other disciplines. There is of course nothing to object to in this as archaeologists, i.e., to actually believe that material culture has something to say about humans and society is fundamental for the discipline.

However, the recent discussion of the role of “things” also has its roots in a post-humanistic theoretical trend and involves agency. Things acting as agents or “actants” on their own have from this point of view been argued to have a “symmetrical relationship” with humans. As long this is restricted to admitting the importance of things, and a recognition that there is a dialectical relationship between us and our things it makes sense. It’s obviously also so that we in a lot of aspect are influenced, and also “entangled” with things and the physical surroundings. However, we argue that there is a big difference between human agency and the influence things can have. Things certainly have consequences, but are not sentient and therefore cannot ‘act’ in the same way as humans. Objects and the physical world are according to us more an interconnected network of constraints and possibilities. It is not a simple symmetrical relationship. It is people who act, but they do it based on different conditions, in which the material is one element.

We believe that ship archaeology, considering both the technical complexity of ships and their connections to, for example, power and economics structures, is one of the most potent ways to discus and study technological development in relation to social change. Questions in connection to this then deal with the changes in ships and shipbuilding during different time periods. To what extent are new types of ships and technological innovations in the rig or in and hull design and construction etc., the results of various changes in society? Or to what extent can one instead see the material changes as prerequisites for economic, political and ideological transformations?
New finds made by us during 2016-17 of Ottoman, Byzantine, Roman and Greek shipwrecks spanning two millennia have also caused us to expand the scope of the study. This also invites less emphasis on a single geographic area. Instead of focusing on the historical development in northern Europe, the emphasis has shifted a little more to the theoretical discussion described above, albeit richly supported and illustrated by the case studies. This will, among other things, be characterized by a separate introductory chapter on ships, society and historical development. These alterations also mean that we need to change the title of the upcoming book. Our new preliminary title is therefore: "Archeology of Sunken Ships - A Perspective on Society, Innovation and Change". We stress that none of the material originally intended to be included in the book has been removed, only that new material has been added.

In 2017 we spent over two months working on the book together not including time spent working independently. This has been done at our respective Universities in Sweden and England, but also in conjunction with two joint fieldwork periods of a month (June and September).

The cooperation in 2017 has also resulted in a new research project between Southampton and Södertörn Universities entitled "The New Ship. Power, Agency and Maritime Technology in Early Modern Europe ". We share the managements and the role of Co-Principal Investigators for this project. The work is currently funded by our existing research funds at our respective institutions, but our ambition is to link some PhD students/postdoctoral researchers to the project.

During August 2018 we will have students from Southampton's participation in the Södertörn and Blekinge museum's investigations of the late medieval wreck Gripshunden in Blekinge. In addition, some students from Södertörn will attend the Southampton Centre for Maritime Archaeology and Bulgarian Center for Underwater Archeology’s excavation at Ropotamo in the Black Sea in September.

Our ambition is to have a manuscript ready for a peer review process in 2018. Publication of the book is planned to be through our respective university publishing departments and possibly also in collaboration with external partner. The book will primarily build upon text, but we intend to clarify our reasoning with photos (including digital, photogrammetric reconstructions), painting and drawings