March 21, 2013 - Divers revisiting
the wreck in Greece where an ancient computer was found have discovered an
array of artefacts.
Divers returning to the site of an
ancient wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera have found artefacts
scattered over a wide area of the steep, rocky sea floor. These include intact
pottery, the ship's anchor and some puzzling bronze objects. The team believes
that hundreds more items could be buried in the sediment nearby.
The Antikythera wreck, which dates
from the first century BC, yielded a glittering haul when sponge divers
discovered it at the beginning of the 20th century. Among jewelry
weapons and statues were the remains of a mysterious clockwork device, dubbed
the Antikythera mechanism.
Bar a brief visit by the undersea
explorer Jacques Cousteau in the 1970s (featured in his documentary Diving for
Roman Plunder), no one had visited the wreck since, leading to speculation
about what treasures might still be down there. The locals told tales of giant
marble statues lying beyond the sponge divers' reach, while ancient technology
geeks like me wondered whether the site might be hiding another Antikythera
mechanism, or at least some clues as to whom this mysterious object belonged
to.
Cue all-round excitement when in
October last year, a team of divers led by Brendan Foley of Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution and Aggeliki Simossi of Greece's Ephorate of
Underwater Antiquities, went back for a proper look. The divers used James
Bond-style propulsion vehicles equipped with high-resolution video cameras to
circumnavigate the island at about 40 metres depth. Now the photos released by
the team show some of what they found.
For centuries Antikythera was in a
busy shipping lane, but surprisingly its treacherous underwater cliffs and
reefs are not littered with sunken ships (perhaps those ancient navigators were
more skilled than we thought). And there are no obvious signs of a wreck at the
site supposedly excavated by Cousteau, suggesting that he recovered all of the
visible items there - or that he planted some of his finds for the
cameras.
But 200 metres away, the divers
found artifacts spread across the rocky sea floor, on a steep slope
between 35 and 60 metres deep.
The largest item recovered was a
huge lead anchor stock. It was lying on a semicircular object that might be a
scupper pipe, used to drain water from the ship's deck. If so, the ship may
have gone down as she was sailing with the anchor stowed. The team also raised
an intact storage jar (amphora), which matches those previously recovered from
the wreck. DNA tests may reveal its original contents.
Most intriguing are dozens of
irregular spherical objects sprinkled across the wreck site. They look like
rocks but contain flecks of green, suggesting small bronze fragments, corroded
and encrusted in sediment after thousands of years in the sea. This is just
what the Antikythera mechanism looked like when it was discovered. Then again,
they could be collections of ship's nails.
Because the artifacts the
team found are a short distance from the site investigated by Cousteau, it's
possible that they belong to a second ship from around the same date as the
original wreck, perhaps part of the same fleet. But Foley thinks it more likely
that all of the remains come from one vessel that broke up as it sank.
To confirm this, he hopes to revisit
the site later this year. He wants to use metal detectors to map the
distribution of metal and ceramic objects buried beneath the surface, as well
as dig a few test trenches. "I'm intensely curious about what's in the
sediments," he says.
Cousteau only excavated a few
square meters of the site but that was enough to reveal more than two
hundred items, including jewelry coins and small bronze statues. But
while previous visits to the wreck have been little more than salvage
expeditions, Foley says he'd love to carry out a systematic, scientific
excavation of the wreck site, if he can find anyone to sponsor him: "As
soon as we have the money we'll be back."
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