The Mediterranean abounded with ships travelling to carry goods between the Middle East and Italy during Roman times. Now some of these sunken ships are being discovered and telling us a story. I first found out about the Antikythera shipwreck last year from my father who has spent a majority of his life on boats. What fascinated him the most was the mechanism, this appeared to be a pressurization valve used in ships. After a little digging, I found out that this was not a valve but an ancient analog computer designed to track astronomical movements. The wreck was found over 100 years ago by two divers, recently the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports has teamed up with the ‘Return to Antikythera’ team to return to the site and discover more about these ships. Through the use of robots, special diving suits, and iPads, the team was able to map out the ship and determine where they would most likely benefit from the dive. The most recent dive shed light to the fact that there is not just one ship down there, but two. Was one ship a guard ship for the one carrying the treasures or did one try to rob the other and they both sank in the struggle? The archaeologists are hoping to use particles from the inside the ceramic artifacts and the composition of the lead to gain insight into where the ship was from, what food they ate, perfumes they used, and/or ancient medicines that were used. About 215 miles away, the greatest accumulation of shipwrecks has been discovered in the Fourni archipelago prompting a joint operation between the Greece and America have begun exploring it, with the Co-direction of the University of Southampton. Ships rarely stop in Fourni, with a population of 1,459 over 13 islands, with the majority on Fourni proper (1120). So far, twenty-two ships have been discovered in less than two weeks. Through the use of photogrammetry, or the use of photos in mapping and surveying, the team made 3D maps of the area and developed an idea of how vast this project might be. The corridor through which the ships passed was part of the trade route connecting Greece, modern day Turkey, and Egypt. We know that this passage remained important for a long time due to the various time periods represented in the wrecks. There are ships that date from the Archaic period, which is the time period where the city-state of Athens was creating colonies throughout the Aegean and Greece as a whole fought off Persia. This area would have had high traffic for both of those occasions. The newest ships in the archipelago are from the Late Medieval Period, around the 16th century. Over half of the ship's date from the Late Roman Period, about 300-600 A.D. Due to the rocky terrain underwater in this area, it’s hard to find actual pieces of the ships the pieces that are left are mostly the artifacts that were contained as cargo. The most precious of these an amorpha, a container shaped to a point which contained water, wine, oil, or fish sauce; the markings on the outside would help one in identifying the contents. Mark Lawall, an expert on Greek transport, believes that since we know when and where these amorpha were made we could get a confirmation as to what the trade routes looked like. With only a small portion of this vast ship graveyard covered I’m sure that in the coming years as both technology and skill progress we’ll find amazing discoveries with marine archaeology.
Sources: http://antikythera.whoi.edu/artifacts/antikythera-mechanism/
Wei-Hass, Maya, "Antikythera Shipwreck Yields New Cache of Ancient Treasures", Smithsonian, September 29, 2015. November 15, 2015
2011 Greek census
Blakemore, Erin, "A Shipwreck Graveyard Has Been Found Off This Greek Archipelago", Smithsonian. October 29, 2015