oa Maritime matriarchs?

This chapter will dive into a new research project, which began by creating a database for spatial analysis, and workers/owners’ names, of private shipyards in Amsterdam during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It became clear in the notary archive records, that many women, nearly one hundred so far found, were listed in association with various shipyards. This sharpened the project’s angle and tailored the research questions: what was the role of these women? Were they merely names in a document, or did they have some level of agency in the affairs of the shipyard? These questions will guide the next phase of the project and will have preliminary results to report on in the next few months.

This research could make an important contribution when combined with archaeological excavations. The material culture of women has been an understudied field in the past and the archival research into the women of Amsterdam’s shipyards can be used to help inform artefact analysis. For example, objects recovered from shipyard excavations may be dated to a period with a strong presence of women at the yard.