For an archaeologist, an amazing day would be finding one ancient shipwreck—so imagine how it would feel in just two short weeks to find 22 wrecks.
In fact, that’s just what a team of Greek and American archaeologists managed to do, thanks to tip-offs from fishermen and sponge divers off the little-explored coast of the Fourni archipelago in the eastern Aegean Sea.
According to National Geographic, the ships discovered span the course of time, from the Greek Archaic period (700-480 BCE, think: Homer) through the Classical (when the Parthenon was built, 480-323 BCE) and Hellenistic (323-31 BCE, following the Death of Alexander the Great) Greek periods, continuing on through Roman rule and into the Late Medieval Period (the 1500s).
“It’s an extremely rich area,” Greek director George Koutsouflakis, an archaeologist with the Hellenic Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, told National Geographic, in perhaps the understatement of the year.
And there is more to come—the team has only explored 5 percent of the area, and local fishermen have already given them plenty more tips on where to find wrecks.
Where’d the ships come from?
All 22 ships were merchant vessels, which sunk while sailing a route that connected Greece and Italy to Egypt and the East. The majority of ships (12) sank around the Late Roman Period, between 300 and 600 CE. Because of this, the archaeologists suspect that a large spike in traffic occurred in this time, perhaps thanks to the rise of Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire at this time.
The ships have since decomposed or been eaten by seaworms, but their cargo remains. So far, only clay storage jars known as amphorae have been found, but these provide a wealth of information. For example, the size and shape of amphorae can help date the jars, and can aid in discovering where they were made. Residue or DNA analysis can indicate what the jars contained, and thus what the merchants were looking to sell.
“We know from comparable shipwrecks and terrestrial sites that the three major goods would have been olive oil, wine, and fish sauce,” said Jeffrey Royal, a co-director from the Florida-based RPM Nautical Foundation.
Such common items were typically transported in large amphorae, whereas smaller jars held items like jams, fruits, honey, hazelnuts, almonds, and luxuries like perfume.
As to how the ships sunk, it appears to have been an unhappy end for the sailors aboard: Many of them were apparently smashed against cliffs or rocks in surrounding shallow waters.
“You can look at the spatial patterning of the sites and reconstruct a plausible story about what happened,” said Peter Campbell, a co-director of the project from the University of Southampton. “It looks like some of them were anchored behind cliffs to shelter from a northwest wind, but this made them vulnerable to a southern wind that drove them against the cliffs.”
The odds, unfortunately, were not in the sailors’ favor
“Of the 22 wrecks we studied, there were probably four where they might have had a chance to swim to a beach or shore. But most of the spots were next to sheer cliffs. There’s no way they would’ve survived in a storm,” Campbell said.
Obviously, there is an enormous amount of work left to be done—and plenty of exciting things yet to be learned. However, there is one not-so-insignificant problem: looters. Locals have reported seeing suspicious activity at some of the sites—and a few show evidence of it. For the time being, the Greek authorities can now supervise these 22 sites, but the rest of the archipelago remains significantly less protected.
One simple solution is, of course, to seek out local communities to protect their heritage. “An engaged local population is the best form of protection,” Campbell said.
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Feature Image: Thinkstock
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