Pieces of Eight: More Archaeology of Piracy ed. by Charles R. Ewen and Skowronek K. Russell (review)

Ewen and Skowronek's Pieces of Eight: More Archaeology of Piracy presents an eclectic mix of archaeological and theoretical work seeking to answer the central question of whether it is possible to determine piratical behaviour from recoverable artefacts. The edited collection comes by way of popular demand ten years after Ewen's first edited volume X Marks the Spot: The Archaeology of Piracy and brings together well-documented scholarship covering piratical patterns of behaviour at sea, on land and in the popular imagination. The contributors cover some of the most popular pirate figures including Blackbeard, Kidd, Black Bart and Morgan in some of the most notorious pirate bases such as Madagascar's St. Marie Island, Ireland's west coast, and Jamaica's Port Royal. Yet a major strength of the volume lies not in the re-telling of sensationalist pirate narrative but the steady unearthing of a more human history.

The introductory chapter explains how book is aimed at "educated popular audiences" and does not necessitate prior knowledge of archaeological methodology or theoretical background. As such, editors explain key concepts of archaeological investigation including three types of research sites (lairs, staging sites, and transhipment sites) and explain some of the difficulties faced by contributing authors in terms of attributing their findings to piratical activities when such activities were culturally open to interpretation and depended heavily on a timeline of legal restrictions governing colonial possessions. For example, recovering French ceramics in St. Augustine, Florida would have been indicative of illicit trade (and therefore piracy) if the findings could be dated to the seventeenth century but merely a sign of accepted trade if they date to the eighteenth century when the Bourbon kings of France and Spain permitted trading in the region. The caveats offered in the opening and concluding chapters of the book offer cautionary commentary that complements the balanced tone of the collection overall, particularly considering content that deals with the behaviors of a population that can be interpreted both as professional "lawless people of the sea" (p. 58) and opportunistic fisherman (p. 189). The editors do not shy away from the problematic issue that "piracy is a behavioural act and does not survive in the archaeological record" (p. 260), but instead succeed in compiling a series of chapters that address the physical evidence of such behaviours and try to piece together some of the hidden histories of people who, if successful, were often anonymous.

The edited collection starts with three chapters that update the reader on what has happened on wreck sites introduced in the first edited volume in 2006, it continues with three chapters documenting new wreck sites, and concludes with five chapters that are not explicitly documenting wreck sites but attempt to define the real lifestyles, emblems, and economic role of those who operated outside of state-controlled trade in the golden age of piracy. Although the editors do not make the organization of these three sections explicit until the concluding paragraph, there is a clear logic to the sequencing of chapters that pitches the book to readers of the first volume and foregrounds aquatic archaeology, an approach that is reinforced by the photograph on the book cover which shows a diver recovering gold coins from the sea-bed. However, less than half of the contributing chapters focus explicitly on underwater archaeology. A strength of the book is that editors have chosen to contextualize wreck recoveries alongside the findings of archaeological sites on land (specifically in Panama, Ireland, and Florida) and investigation into popular pirate iconography (specifically the skull and crossbones).

The three chapters updating the reader about recent developments on wreck sites start with Wilde-Ramsing and Carnes-McNaughton's chapter on Blackbeard's flagship Queen Anne's Revenge and its French Connections, for example the wonderful detail of two marks on a wooden stern post 12.75 inches apart that correspond to a French foot and suggest where the ship was built. The authors' dedication to detail...