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This volume derives from a conference held in Cambridge in 2007 on the global origins of seafaring, and contains an impressive range of contributions from international scholars from Europe, the USA and Oceania. The scope of the volume is ambitious and global, and its significance will be found in the diversity of voices and approaches and the important contribution that it will make to rethinking prehistory on the broader scale. As the editors argue, the sea has long been an important factor in human cultural and economic development yet remains, in comparison with the landscapes of prehistory, a markedly understudied resource. This volume starts to redress the balance. In their Foreword, the editors rightly point to gaps in the global coverage, and indeed at some stage in the future the ideas presented in this volume might give rise to a more considered study of ancient African seafaring (as well as early seafaring in the Americas), for example,...