Category: Underwater Archaeology

Asterix Update

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

No, not the loveable short Gaul, but the shipwreck. From the BBC:

Dr Jason Monaghan said Asterix is the most historically valuable Roman artefact in northern Europe.

He said a public private partnership could be the way forward.

Dr Monaghan said: “It’s a very exciting idea, but Guernsey is actually quite a small place and maritime archaeology projects are expensive.”

He said: “What we’re saying at the moment is the ship is ready we want people now who are interested in helping secure the future of the ship to step forward and to start the discussion of where it’s going to go, how we’re going to fund it coming here.”

The wreck was found on Christmas Day 1982 in St Peter Port Harbour and raised by the Guernsey Maritime Trust during 1984-86.

Since then it has undergone restoration work at the Mary Rose Trust in Portsmouth, costing the States £5,000 a year.

Dr Monaghan said: “It will be finished in terms of conservation in the next couple of months, the Mary Rose Trust have agreed to keep it until the end of 2011 and we’re discussing with them whether they can keep it for a couple more years while we establish what we’re going to do with the ship long term.

“It would be very nice if it could be brought back to Guernsey, the chief problem is its size, it’s 18m (59ft) long. There’s no building that the Museums service has which is long enough to put it in.

“So we have to find a building, we have to convert the building, we have to build a glass showcase to put the ship in with a bit of environmental controls to keep the humidity stable.

“Then we have to build effectively a museum gallery around it in order to make it interesting for the general public who don’t know anything about Roman ships.

“So we display the artefact beautifully and then we interpret it for locals, for visitors, for school groups so that they can understand what they are seeing so they see how it fits into ships in the Roman world and how Guernsey fits into the Roman world as well.”

Dr Monaghan said the wreck was extremely important to Guernsey.

“It takes St Peter Port’s history back as a trading port right back to the 3rd Century AD and actually probably before that,” he said.
St Peter Port Harbour and Cobo Bay Dr Monaghan said St Peter Port Harbour looked more like Cobo Bay when the ship was afloat

“So it shows how important we were in the Roman world and it’s also the biggest Roman object from Britain [and] the largest surviving seagoing ship of this particular antiquity in northern Europe.

“It’s a Celtic style boat, i.e. a boat made by the people who lived in the region, but it had Roman technology built into it, so it’s an interesting mix of the local style and Roman – we’ve got bits of evidence to about 50BC of ships like this operating locally.

“This ship was designed specifically in our waters, it’s got a flat bottom which means it didn’t need a harbour because St Peter Port in those days would have looked a bit more like Cobo with little rocky inlets and with beaches in between.

“It would have been able to come in here and go up on the beach and wouldn’t have needed a great big posh jetty like the Roman merchant ships would have done. This is a special local adaption to solve particular problems and it’s also very heavily built so it could stand a bit of rough handling.”

Some previous coverage:

Roman Shipwrecks off Zannone

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

This one just started filtering in this a.m. … here’s the Reuters coverage:

A team of marine archaeologists using sonar scanners have discovered four ancient shipwrecks off the tiny Italian island of Zannone, with intact cargoes of wine and oil.

The remains of the trading vessels, dating from the first century BC to the 5th-7th century AD, are up to 165 meters underwater, a depth that preserved them from being disturbed by fishermen over the centuries.

“The deeper you go, the more likely you are to find complete wrecks,” said Annalisa Zarattini, an official from the archaeological services section of the Italian culture ministry.

The timber structures of the vessels have been eaten away by tiny marine organisms, leaving their outlines and the cargoes still lying in the position they were stowed on board.

“The ships sank, they came to rest at the bottom of the sea, the wood disappeared and you find the whole ship, with the entire cargo. Nothing has been taken away,” she said.

The discoveries were made through cooperation between Italian authorities and the Aurora Trust, a U.S. foundation that promotes exploration of the Mediterranean seabed.

The vessels, up to 18 meters long, had been carrying amphorae, or large jars, containing wine from Italy, and cargo from North Africa and Spain including olive oil, fruit and garum, a pungent fish sauce that was a favorite ingredient in Roman cooking.

Another ship, as yet undated, appeared to have been carrying building bricks. It is unclear how the vessels sank and no human remains have been found.

TRADE ROUTES

The vessels are the second “fleet” of ships to be discovered in recent years near the Pontine islands, an archipelago off Italy’s west coast believed to have been a key junction for ships bringing supplies to the vast warehouses of Rome.

“One aim was to test the hypothesis that the Pontine islands, which are very small and which were barely inhabited in antiquity, were really important maritime staging posts because they had very good natural harbors,” Zarattini said.

The team hope to find a secondary cargo of smaller items which they believe would have been stowed in straw and may be well preserved under the crustacean-clad sediments.

Last year, the project found five wrecks off nearby Ventotene, an island used in Roman times to exile disgraced Roman noblewomen. The Emperor Augustus sent his daughter Julia there to punish her for adultery.

Italy has signed a new UNESCO agreement that requires them to leave the wreckage in place, potentially opening the way to would-be treasure hunters although Zarattini said the benefits in terms of tourism outweighed the risks.

“We think the sea, which is particularly beautiful around these islands, can become a real museum,” she said.

“In the future, not so far off, a lot of people will be able to go down and see the wreckage themselves.”

via: Sonar scanners find ancient wrecks off Italian coast | Reuters

As mentioned in the article, last year this same group of folks found those five shipwrecks off Ventotene, and the project does have a website about their activities which is worth looking at. Their blog relates a press conference, however, which seems to suggest these shipwrecks are connected to the shipwreck found at Panarea which we mentioned a few weeks ago. Not sure if that suggests we may be hearing more in the near future or not, but a clarification post/article might be a good thing.

More coverage:

Roman Shipwreck near Panarea

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment
Vulcano and the Aeolian Islands.
Image via Wikipedia

Starting the summer blogging season with a brief item from ANSA:

The wreck of a Roman ship from the first century AD which is still whole and has over 500 wide-mouthed amphorae onboard has been discovered to the south of the island of Panarea. The discovery, which was made by the Sea Superintendence together with the American Foundation ‘Aurora Trust’ and the support of the Environment Ministry, was illustrated in a press conference this morning in Palermo by the Regional Councillor for Cultural Heritage, Gaetano Armao, and by the Superintendent, Sebastiano Tusa. ”From the first surveys,” said Tusa, ”we can establish that it is a merchant shipping measuring around 25 metres, in perfect condition, which transported fruit and vegetables from Sicily to the markets in the north. The style of the amphorae is in fact typical of the ‘workshops’ of the island and of southern Italy. The merchant ship was identified with the use of a wire-controlled ‘Rov’ video camera. Now the campaign in the Aeolian islands will proceed with ”research carried out,” explains Tusa, ”with particularly sophisticated robots which will allow us to better contextualise the wreck in time and space.” The ship might not be the only one: on the seabed of Panarea there is believed to be another ship. ”Traces have been found,” concluded Tusa, ”of a second wreck that has not yet been identified. Research will be carried out in this direction.” The amphorae are the Dressel 21-22 type, datable to the first century AD, made in Lazio and used for the transport of Garum (a popular sauce in Roman times), fresh and dried fruit, as well as various types of cereals. The amphorae were found placed in a slightly different position to their original one on the ship. They are in fact lying on one side. This would indicate that the ship, sliding along the seabed, came to rest leaning on one side.

via ROMAN SHIPWRECK DISCOVERED NEAR AEOLIAN ISLANDS | ANSA.

That Shipwreck Full of Lead

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

A while ago we mentioned that lead recovered from a Roman shipwreck was going to be used to help in neutrino research. I’m sure I’m not the only one who was more interested in the shipwreck than the lead, so I’m happy to share this very interesting video/slideshow thingy by Rossella Lorenzi of Discovery News fame. All about the wreck:

Protecting a Greek Shipwreck

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ 1 Comment

Very interesting item buried in my email from last week:

The second century Greek trading vessel lies on the sea bed off the coast of Cavtat.

Little remains of the wooden ship but its cargo of earthenware amphora – ceramic vases – still remain stacked row upon row.

The vases, which originally contained olive oil and wine, are still tightly packed into the cargo hold as they were centuries ago.

Its cargo – one of the best preserved from an ancient wreck – has great historical significance and has an estimated value of £5m on the black market.

Croatian authorities are so concerned about looters plundering the valuable artefacts they have now protected the site – with a metal cage.

The heavy-duty cage features a large hinged door, which is kept locked with occasional access granted for divers under strict supervision.

Underwater photographer Neil Hope, of Torpoint in Cornwall, was among those given permission to dive the wreck.

He said: ”I’m an experienced diver and I’ve dived wrecks all over the world, but this was the most unique experience.

”I was taken down there by the man who discovered it. As soon as we were finished they closed the door and locked it up again.

”Obviously when you are inside you can’t touch any of the cargo as it is very valuable, so they don’t just let anyone inside the cage.

”You need excellent buoyancy skills so you’re not damaging these valuable things.”

He was working on an assignment for the British Sub-Aqua Club’s (BS-AC) DIVE magazine.

via Underwater ‘safe’ protects £5m shipwreck treasures | Telegraph.

Hmmm … very interesting. I can’t find that we’ve mentioned this shipwreck find before and it’s very interesting that we don’t seem to hear of any archaeologists in this report. FWIW, another shipwreck find in this general area seems to be under a cloak of secrecy: that Boka Kotorska wreck off Montenegro.

UPDATE: (a couple of weeks later) … an item from ABC suggests this really isn’t a ‘protection’ project, but the focus is actually dive-tourism (not a bad thing, but a different sort of impression than the original provides):