Aegean Archipelago
The find came in an area known as the Fourni Archipelago, a small group of 13 islands along with islets and reefs that all sit between the larger islands of Samos and Icaria. These islands are between what was once a major shipping route of antiquity, with trading vessels going from the Black Sea and the Levant through the Aegean. Along with Greece, areas involved in the trading included present-day Egypt, Israel and Lebanon.
Peter Campbell is an underwater archaeologist at the University of Southampton in the U.K. and he was a leader of the expedition. Campbell was, to put it mildly, surprised at what they found over just 13 days of looking in an area only 17 square miles in size.
Local fisherman and sponge divers have long said artifacts have on occasion been found in the area so when they arrived in mid-September they expected to find some evidence of shipwreck. But not an ocean floor literally strewn with objects from different long-ago eras.
“You’re constantly scanning in any direction,” Campbell told The Washington Post. “There’s this moment you see something, a straight line that doesn’t look natural, and your eye kind of flips over. You realize it’s an ancient pot or ancient anchor, then you notice this stuff is everywhere.”
Shipwreck capital of world
Last week a press release from the expedition said the area may be “the ancient shipwreck capital of the world” and noted the “discovery adds 12% to the total number of known ancient shipwrecks in Greece.”
There are almost certainly more ships down there as the ocean gets very rough in the area and it is likely many sank in storms, some likely having gone down while trying to reach shelter in the calm bays of the islands. They stopped looking only because their permit elapsed and they are appling to return next year.
“The concentration of ancient shipwrecks is unprecedented,” says Campbell. “The volume of shipwrecks in Fourni, an island that had no major cities or harbours, speaks to its role in navigation as well as the perils of sailing the eastern Aegean.”
The press release noted the difference in eras:
“The shipwrecks date from the Archaic Period (700-480 BC) though the Late Medieval Period (16th century). Several wrecks date to the Classical (480-323 BC) and Hellenistic (323-31 BC) periods, but over half of the wrecks date to the Late Roman Period (circa 300-600 AD).
“The ships’ cargos point to the importance of long distance trade between the Black Sea, Aegean Sea, Cyprus, the Levant, and Egypt in all these periods. The findings offer insight into ancient maritime connections, as well as rare discoveries. “
The “rare discoveries” noted are in part the “diversity of the cargoes,” with items that have never been found in ancient shipwrecks previously. George Koutsouflakis of the Greek Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities and a part of the expedition, said that at least three of the ships yielded cargoes contain items that have never previously been encountered on a shipwreck.
It was indeed an unprecedented expedition, the likes of which is rarely seen in the exploration of shipwrecks. “I don’t think I’ll ever get the chance again to come upon 22 shipwrecks in a single season,” Campbell said.
“It’s really a once-in-a-lifetime discovery.”
