Introduction

At least since the ancestors of the Australian aboriginal people crossed what are now the Timor and Arafura Seas to reach Australia about 40,000 years ago (Lourandos, 1997), the ocean has been part of the development of human society. It is not surprising that human interaction with the ocean over this long period profoundly influenced the development of culture. Within “culture” it is convenient to include the other elements – aesthetic, religious and spiritual – that are regarded as aspects of the non-physical ecosystem services that humans derive from the environment around them. This is not to decry the difference between all these aspects, but rather to define a convenient umbrella term to encompass them all. On this basis, this chapter looks at the present-day implications of the interactions between human culture and the ocean under the headings of cultural products, cultural practices and cultural influences.

Cultural products

No clear-cut distinction exists between objects which have a utilitarian value (because they are put to a use) and objects which have a cultural value (because they are seen as beautiful or sacred or prized for some other non-utilitarian reason). The two categories can easily overlap. Furthermore, the value assigned to an object may change: something produced primarily for the use to which it can be put may become prized, either by the society that produces it or by some other society, for other reasons (Hawkes, 1955). In looking at products from the ocean as cultural ecosystem services, the focus is upon objects valued for nonutilitarian reasons. The value assigned to them will be affected by many factors: primarily their aesthetic or religious significance, their rarity and the difficulty of obtaining them from the ocean. The example of large numbers of beads made from marine shells found in the burial mounds dating from the first half of the first millennium CE of the Mound People in Iowa, United States of America, 1,650 kilometres from the sea, shows how exotic marine products can be given a cultural value (Alex, 2010).

Another good – albeit now purely historical – example is the purple dye derived from marine shellfish of the family Muricidae, often known as Tyrian purple. In the Mediterranean area, this purple dye was very highly valued, and from an early date (around 1800-1500 BCE) it was produced in semi-industrial fashion in Crete and later elsewhere.