Divers revisiting the wreck in
Antikythera shipwreck: treasures from the deep – in pictures
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| Divers recover an amphora from the site of the Roman Antikythera shipwreck in Greece. Photograph: Hellenic Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities/WHOI |
Divers
returning to the site of an ancient wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera
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 jewellery, 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
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 artefacts 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 artefacts 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 metres of the site but that was enough to reveal
more than two hundred items, including jewellery, 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."
• Jo Marchant is author of Decoding the Heavens, a book about the Antikythera
mechanism. Her next book, The Shadow King, will be published in June.
guardian.co.uk
