My study will be based on an ethnographic exploration of indigenous maritime knowledge in coastal Tanzania. Using a grounded theory approach, the study will offer anthropological narratives of intangible cultural heritage components of local people’s construction of the sea beyond the materiality of archaeological heritage: the ocean oral traditions, tales, cosmologies, rituals, songs, historical trajectories of the communities-ocean encounters and ocean conservation knowledge practices. The study will look at ways these communities utilize(ed) indigenous maritime heritage/knowledge in the conservation and sustainability of marine ecosystems and how in turn the ocean forms part of, and foundation of, the communities’ livelihoods. I will examine the centrality of these knowledge practices as an integral component of community-ocean co-existence.

Institution: University of Roehampton

Supervisor: Garry Marvin

Area of study: Anthropology