Shipbuilding and shipping during the high and late Middle Ages - evaluation of the archaeological sources of the southwestern Baltic coast

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During the past 15 years numerous ship finds from the 12th to 15th century AD have been discovered and examined along the southwestern coast of the Baltic Sea. These finds include a variety of different ship types of the medieval period. Apart from smaller and medium sized vessels build in the Nordic shipbuilding tradition in particular the finds of vessels with unusually large dimensions combined with a mixture of building characteristics of different northern European shipbuilding traditions are up to now unique for the medieval period and of special interest for the historical and archaeological research. The archaeological material from the southwestern Baltic coast represents an excellent starting point for a still outstanding comprehensive examination of shipbuilding and seafaring during the high and late Middle Ages. They offer new perspectives for the understanding of medieval shipping and the history of shipbuilding. The material does not only give the possibility to expand the research to source material that has up to now found only little consideration in the historical research in Germany. At the same time it is an opportunity to throw light on the question of the evolution of shipbuilding and shipping during the Middle Ages in northern central Europe.Within the scope of the project applied for here, a historical integration of the ship finds fromthe southwestern Baltic coast into the entire evolution of shipbuilding and shipping in northern central Europe will be carried out. The core of the research material consists of ship finds from the early Hanseatic period to the late medieval time, from the 12th to the 15th century along the coast of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. These ship finds will be examined in relation to research results from other countries. The examination will focus on production procedures, technology transfer and the capabilities of the respective ships in regard of the environmental, economic and social conditions of the period. The clarification of these questions will be carried out through an extensive interdisciplinary analysis of the material using a variety of scientific methods.