The course is a general introduction to the field of Maritime Archaeology, focusing on the historical significance of the Coastal Zone during Prehistory in particular. Shorelines, being a fluid interface between land and sea, capture the long history of this planet as documented by the Earth Sciences. The basic tenets, instruments and equipment pertinent to the Earth Sciences are presented, along with the archaeological techniques of underwater excavation and documentation. The sea is then approached in its maritime sense par excellence, namely as a component of culture regarding incipient colonization and settlement, contacts and exchange, symbolism and iconography, further addressing the emergence of incipient settlement in Greece. The course aims at bringing the world of the sea to the fore, including the geo-history of the coastal terrain, as a significant component of global issues and local culture of world prehistory. - Terrestrial Evolution: Magma, Panthalassa and Pangaea, the Tethys Ocean, Laurasia and Gondwana, the emergence of the Mediterranean. - Geo-History: From the Permian-Triassic to the Pleistocene and the Holocene, the emergence of Aegaeis, the formation of islands and mountain ranges, the corresponding organic life of plants and animals. - Marine and Maritime: Methodology of acoustic probing and the relevant instruments used in the marine environments by the Earth Sciences. Oceanography, the sea-bed and the atmosphere, sea temperature, winds and currents, rain-fall, sediments, salinity, acidification, micro-organisms, medium sea level and global models. Methods and techniques of underwater archaeology compared to the standard, terrestrial techniques of documentation. - Settlement in Aegean Prehistory: the question of “Neolithization” and the marineterrestrial interface, island complexes and the emergence of 3rd millennium cultures, the role of sea-routes in the establishment of the Minoan and the Mycenaean palatial networks, the Sea Peoples. Navigation: the network of prehistoric ports and porttowns. - Symbolism and the Sea: motifs and styles in pottery decoration, rocks in relief and the palatial frescoes, ritual deposits of models and mollusks in sanctuaries, the marine style and the ship-frescoes, scenes of arrival as a Homeric “topos”.