Prompted by post-modern initiatives, a large body of historical and archaeological scholarship is investigating dispossessed, migratory, and mobile communities within history.  Particularly rare among these numerous efforts, however, are investigations of maritime people as an underclass in the classical and late antique eras, which is striking; at present, only three  authors have addressed this topic.  Much like studies of immigrants buildings the railroads in North America, or the poor and freedmen in ancient Greece and Rome, this was a large, transitory community of sailors, migrants, workmen, captains, and fugitives vital to society yet adjacent to those in power and their histories.
My research at the Center for Advanced Studies builds on the results of my recent monograph challenging the common use of reductive, normative labels like 'Roman' or 'Byzantine' to portray ships and their crews, and instead relies on the large corpus of material data to establish a social-historical narrative of the maritime community in antiquity.  Within this overall project, my research at the Center will explore and clarify what theories and methodologies about contemporary migratory and mobile communities are applicable to the maritime underclass in the Late Antique era.  For example, as refugees and migrants in the present era often use everyday objects as mnemonic devices to define, remind, and express identity and home, can we find similar items in Byzantine-era wreck assemblages, acting as icons and mementos of a distant home?  Or, are the carved invocations for safe journeys left by Late Roman and early-Medieval sailors on the islets of Syros and Prote analogous to the examples left by migrants entering the EU and the US?  Their similarities suggest that the ancient maritime community emplaced themselves in the liminal spaces constructed by sedentary groups in power, but were still conscious of their transient lives.  The overall goal of this project is to argue that the similarities in practices between these past and present groups embodies similarities in experiences as well, illuminating the human dynamics and social relations of the maritime community in Late Antiquity.