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REVIEW BY SHANNON LEE DAWDY
Dead Man’s Chest is a collection of essays and research reports by practising archaeologists and historians who have conducted work on shipwrecks, terrestrial sites, artefact collections, and archival sources. It is the third book in a series by lifelong collaborators Russell Skowronek and Charles Ewen.
While sea banditry is as old as sea trading, and well documented for the ancient Mediterranean and China, this book focuses primarily on the ‘Golden Age of Piracy’ (1650-1730). Readers familiar with larger-than-life characters like Blackbeard, Anne Bonney, and Henry Morgan will learn that these famous ‘pirateers’ had a remarkably global range that stretched well beyond the Caribbean, from Brazil to Maine, Ghana to India. Although there is a Caribbean and Atlantic bias to the book (pirates were also active in Asia and the Pacific), it includes recent research by international teams working in the Indian Ocean.
‘Pirateer’ is a term coined by contributor Kenneth Wild, highlighting that the lines between privateer (a legal mercenary), pirate, and smuggler were not only hard to draw, but that a person or ship could switch between these roles over time and space. A couple of evidential takeaways emerge from the volume: (1) it is difficult to identify pirate sites in the absence of corroborating archival evidence, and (2) certain artefactual patterns can tilt the evidence towards a piracy connection. These are heavily armed fast ships and an unusually cosmopolitan artefactual assemblage indicating that those on board had opportunities to accumulate goods and trinkets from places as dispersed as China, Egypt, England, France, and Africa within a short timeframe. Some contributions exhibit remarkable sleuthing and forensics, but the most insightful work comes from researchers working on terrestrial sites. We learn that pirate sites included fishing villages, logging camps, forts built by French engineers, as well as hidden ‘lairs’ where they could careen their ships and hunt for turtles. In other words, there are pirate landscapes as well as pirate ships.
In his opening chapter, co-editor Charles Ewen asks whether or not we should celebrate piracy. To those they preyed on, who were just as likely to be the working poor or enslaved Africans as wealthy merchants, pirates were criminals prone to acts of spectacular violence. Were they closer to the terrorists of our times than the romantic rebels of Disney franchises? Ewen himself does not seem certain, but clearly pirates continue to fascinate us. Although the editors’ intent was to reach both academic and general readers, the common denominator is probably the pirate nerd of either stripe who can’t get enough bilges and boatswain whistles. Even an essay on pirate archaeology in video games struggles to rise above the details. Still, the facts presented remind us that piracy cannot be uncoupled from the history of slavery, the environmental impacts of colonialism, the spread of global capital, or the political animosities of rival empires and religious sectarianism. Early modern pirates responded more boldly to these ongoing forces than most of us can manage today. Perhaps that is the reason we keep looking for them, and towards them.
Dead Man’s Chest: exploring the archaeology of piracy
Russell K Skowronek and Charles R Ewen (eds)
University Press of Florida, £44.95
ISBN 978-0813069746
