On the Ocean analyses and describes the changing relationship between people and two oceans: the Atlantic and the Mediterranean – the one seemingly endless, the other contained. Barry Cunliffe writes of a contest between humans and the sea, of changing world views and of archaeological discoveries that are changing our perceptions of the central role of the sea in human history.

Human engagement with the ocean was always complex. Cunliffe’s narrative begins with an examination of how the sea was different, of the lure of distant places. The ocean was the subject of myth, of savage monsters and dreadful storms. Chapter 1 draws on a wide range of historical sources to make a distinction between an Atlantic that was a place to be conceptualised and, after 1500, a place with destinations on the far side. Chapter 2 discusses ‘The Combat that is Called Navigation’, from geology to rivers, currents and tides. At first, oral tradition transmitted navigational information, then pilot books, portolans, from the thirteenth century onward. The historical narrative stresses the importance of the appearance of coastal and Mediterranean communities that relied on maritime resources. Between 5300 and 1200 bc, Europe – which is, after all, a peninsula – witnessed three nautical traditions: those of the Nordic region, of the British world, and of the maritime Beaker network, which culminated in a quest for metals that extended over a vast area. Chapter 5 describes the cauldron of intense competition in the eastern Mediterranean after 5300 bc, when states and dynasties rose and fell. Trade in exotic commodities was a significant measure of success. By 1200 bc, trading and seafaring was expanding westward into unknown realms, the subject of myth and travellers’ tales. The critical centuries between 1200 and 600 bc witnessed the transformation of the ancient world. Chapter 6 gives the astounding maritime achievements of the Phoenicians their rightful due, including their possible circumnavigation of Africa from the Red Sea to the Pillars of Hercules.

At this important juncture, Cunliffe explores the ships and technology behind the exploration and trade that opened up Mediterranean and coastal Atlantic waters. Chapter 7, labelled a ‘Technical Interlude’, melds historical information with recent archaeological discoveries to describe the technology behind a wide variety of watercraft from dugouts and sewn leather boats to huge, planked Roman merchant vessels. This valuable summary provides the background for the exploration of the Atlantic coast and the Roman expansion, tracked among other things by finds of amphorae on the sea bed, and the beginnings of the Nordic tradition of seafaring. With the end of the Roman Empire, we are on more familiar ground, with the Norse voyages in the North Atlantic, then the ‘New European Order’ that culminated in 1400 with the discovery of the islands of the Atlantic Mediterranean, and the ‘The Ocean Conquered’, as Dom Henrique of Portugal’s ocean of opportunity was finally explored and defined. We can discern but a fraction of the voyages of exploration and trade that took place before Columbus and Cabot, but there seems little question that there were Europeans on the western side of the Atlantic before them.

In an age of ever more specialised research, few archaeologists have the vision and breadth of knowledge to undertake a work of multidisciplinary history on this scale. Cunliffe has such a perspective. He takes us on a magisterial journey through 40,000 years of the changing relationships between people and two oceans with balanced and learned scholarship that ranges from the DNA of mice teeth on Cyprus to details of ancient shipbuilding, computer modelling of possible Atlantic voyages, and remarkable Phoenician seafaring. On the Ocean reminds us that we ignore the complex relationships between people and the ocean at our peril. Such relationships are one of the cornerstones of the past 15,000 years of European and Mediterranean history. This beautifully and clearly written volume, with its superb colour illustrations, informative maps and diagrams, is nothing less than a masterpiece of multidisciplinary history wrought large as a powerful narrative. The author has already written of the birth of Eurasia in By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean (Reference Cunliffe2017). Dare one hope that he will now extend his range to the realm of the monsoon world and the Erythraean Sea? This would round out what would be a deeply satisfying trilogy. On the Ocean is a tribute both to Cunliffe’s scholarship and to the remarkable achievements of archaeology in recent years. This is, quite simply, one of the finest archaeological books I have ever read.