Subject: BOZBURUN WRECK - Underwater Archeology
From: ATLAS
Date: 2 Jan 1997 11:44:04 GMT
For years the local sponge divers were the only witnesses of the medieval
ship wreck at the bottom of the cliffs of Kucuven Headland at the west of
Sig Harbor in Bozburun. The ship sank because of strong northerly winds
which blow in summer even today. The pile of more than two thousand
amphoras was discovered in the course of investigations of local diver
Mehmet Askin in 1973 and shown to George Bass, founder of the Institute
of Nautical Archaeology. Excavation of the wreck began in 1995, conducted
by a team of students and experts from Turkey, the USA, Britain, Israel,
New Zealand and Canada.
Southwest of Marmaris, not far beyond Orhaniye, where the main road
turns away from the sea to climb over the pass to Bozburun, lies the
small village of Selimiye. Less than a thousand people live here, mostly
farmers and fishermen. A narrow road runs through the town, past the
seaside mosque and a few restaurants catering to visiting yachts. If, in
June, July, or August, you follow the road all the way to the end, where
it disappears into the waters of Sig Liman (Shallow Inlet), you will find
a walled olive grove filled with bamboo-roofed huts. Tourists who drive
up in rented jeeps from Marmaris or yachtsmen who anchor in the bay often
mistake it for a resort or restaurant, but these simple houses are home
to an international team from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, who
are excavating an 1100-year-old ship wrecked on the rocks outside the
mouth of the harbor...
Every morning except Friday, they load twenty sets of scuba tanks
and a large tank of oxygen into three small boats and head out past the
jagged teeth of Küçüven Burnu (Point) into
Hisarönü Körfezi (Castlefront Bay), then back down the
face of the cliffs to a three-story wood and concrete platform perched on
a small spur of rock just above the water. From this platform, these
scientists dive twice each day to the wreck, which lies against the face
of the cliff over 20 meters (70ft) below. Four divers at a time, for
thirty to forty minutes each, they carefully brush and fan away the sand
and mud which has covered the remains of a medieval trading venture for
over a millennium. At the end of the dive, with plastic bags and lifting
trays full of tagged artifacts, they slowly ascend to a decompression
stop at 6 meters (20ft), where they breathe pure oxygen for five to
thirty minutes, depending on the depth and duration of the dive, to help
purge their bodies of the nitrogen they absorbed while under the
increased pressure of the depth.
The artifacts they bring to the surface, pieces of pottery, iron,
copper, wood, bone and glass, are carried back to the camp, where one of
the bamboo roofs shelters a small conservation laboratory. Here, each
item is begun in the long process of conservation, cataloging, study and
analysis. Over the following weeks, often between their dives, project
staff members will clean, draw, describe, photograph and sample it for
analysis. After the excavation season is over, it will travel back to
the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology for further treatment and
study.
The site being excavated near Selimiye had been known to local
sponge divers for many years, and it was a Bozburun diver, Mehmet Askin,
who showed the wreck to Professor George Bass, the founder of the
Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA), during the first INA survey for
shipwrecks in 1973. After so many centuries, it no longer looks like a
ship, but is a low mound of amphoras (two-handled ceramic jars), 20
meters (70ft) long and 8 meters (25ft) wide, lying in the sandy slope at
the base of the cliff . The upper end of the mound lies 23 meters below
the surface of the Aegean, and the deeper end lies at 36 meters (120ft),
although exploratory dives have indicated that a few whole amphoras have
rolled down to the bottom of the channel, 60 meters (200ft) deep. In
addition to the mound of jars, there are broken amphoras and other
artifacts scattered in the rocks above, where one end of the ship must
have ripped open when it smashed into the cliff. An anchor is among the
material concreted into the rocks by marine growth, although we are not
yet sure if it belongs to this ship.
This site was chosen for excavation from nearly a hundred ancient
and medieval wrecks INA has charted on the southwestern coast of Turkey.
There were primarily two factors guiding the choice. The first was the
date of the wreck. Initial studies of sample amphoras raised in 1973 and
1982 indicated that the ship sank in the ninth or early tenth century AD.
This is a period of dramatic change in the eastern Mediterranean, when
the Byzantine Empire entered its medieval "Golden Age" and the
Abbasid Caliphate, the last unified Moslem state before the Ottomans,
was coming to an end. The Italian commercial cities of Genoa, Venice,
and Amalfi were just beginning to make their presence felt in the
Mediterranean economy, which had only just begun to recover from the
depression that followed the Arab conquest of Syria and Egypt in the
seventh century.
Because very little land archaeology has been done on sites of this
period anywhere in the Mediterranean, our understanding of much of what
happened depends on a few historical documents. Our shipwreck, in its
materials, construction, cargo, and personal effects, is a tangible
reflection of that world, and offers a unique opportunity to study its
economy, technology, social relations, and environment. We are fortunate
that this wreck falls between two other wrecks excavated in Turkish
waters, a seventh-century ship at Yassiada, near Bodrum, and an
eleventh-century wreck at Serçe Liman (Sparrow Harbor), not far
from Bozburun. Because of the careful study of those wrecks, we know
what questions to ask of this pile of pottery, iron and wood.
The second factor is the state of preservation of this ship. Much
of it lies in deep sand, which has protected the cargo and the hull from
total disintegration. Many of the shipwreck sites found in Turkish
waters have not fared so well. In shallow water, the action of waves and
storms
breaks up the remains and scatters them, so that it is very difficult to
figure out what was where in the ship, or to know what is missing. Even
in deep water, if a ship sinks onto a rocky bottom without sand or mud to
cover it, little survives except pottery and stone. Here, the sand and
mud have not only locked artifacts into their original locations, so that
we can tell if an object comes from the hold, and is thus cargo, or from
the crew's quarters, but they have also protected fragile organic
objects, from bird bones from the kitchen to wooden stoppers in the
amphoras to the timbers of the hull itself. The possibility of a well
preserved hull underneath the cargo was particularly exciting, as the
Yassiada and Serçe Liman ships had shown that major changes in
ship construction were taking place in the Middle Ages, but neither of
those hulls was very well preserved. Because of the preservation, the
wreck at Küçüven Burnu can tell a much more complete
story about its owner, captain and crew, as well as the world that
produced it, than most of the other wrecks we know of.
Excavation began in the summer of 1995 with the construction of the
camp and diving platform. Students and staff from Turkey, the United
States, the United Kingdom, Israel, New Zealand, and Canada arrived in
Selimiye with three large truck loads of tools, equipment and supplies.
In a matter of weeks, an olive grove belonging to a local farmer was
transformed into a miniature village, with its own water, electrical, and
sewage systems, and an unfinished house just up the road was converted
into a laboratory, storage and cataloging facility. Students discovered
that doing nautical archaeology means learning how to mix cement, lift
heavy equipment, plumb sinks, and roof buildings. At the excavation site
itself, we decided that it would be too dangerous to try to moor our
research vessel near the site, since the same northerly winds
that had wrecked the ninth-century ship still blow all summer. Since the
wreck lies 25 meters (80ft) down, but only about 5 meters (15ft) out from
the cliff, we decided to build a fixed platform on a spur projecting out
into the water. When we began, there was no level space to be seen, only
jagged, water-worn pinnacles and boulders of limestone. With sledge
hammers, crow bars and cement, we leveled the top of the rock and
anchored wooden beams to support a diving platform above the wreck, and
two other levels of flooring for all of the people needed to manage the
complex diving and artifact recovery operation.
We also spent some time in 1995 creating a safe diving environment.
Many diving accidents, and the majority of diving fatalities, are related
to divers running out of air. To minimize this hazard, we placed several
sets of full scuba tanks around the site, easily accessible to the
divers, and set up a small diving bell near the top of the site. This
plexiglass dome holds a captured bubble of air at a convenient height,
allowing a diver to enter and remove his or her equipment if necessary,
or two divers can enter together to talk or solve an equipment
difficulty. Oxygen is supplied to the decompression stop at 6 meters
from bottles on the platform; in 1996
we improved the arrangement of this system to allow divers to hang more
comfortably in the water, where many of us read books to pass the time.
I finished three novels this past summer, and another staff member
learned Turkish.
Archaeological work began with recording the site, before any sand
or artifacts had been moved. We also probed through the sand with thin
rods to determine how much of the site lay hidden, and how deeply buried
the lowest artifacts were. After determining the limits of the site, we
established a number of datum points, fixed markers in the rocks and sand
around the wreck, that are used as reference points for determining the
location of artifacts. Some of these points are little more than large
nails hammered into the rocks, but others are large towers made of pipes
hammered deeply into the sand bottom - swinging a sledge hammer while
swimming is an interesting exercise! The field objects are scattered
over is then divided into 2m (7ft) squares by driving pipes into the
ground or rocks and attaching ropes. During the excavation the divers
only work in the squares they are personally responsible for. Within the
square labels are attached to the site of each object found.
During the 1995 season, we also began the process of mapping and
recovering the many amphoras that are the site's most visible feature.
We estimate that the ship may have carried as many as 2,000 amphoras when
it sank. Many of these were broken in the wreck and over the centuries,
as anchors were dropped on the site, and a few have been removed by
divers, but there are still probably a thousand or more whole jars left.
Originally, the amphoras were stacked in orderly rows in two or probably
three layers. We discovered that much of the bottom layer was still in
place, and excavation in 1996 revealed columns of jars, their handles
neatly aligned, marching like short, fat soldiers down the slope. The
upper layers had largely been disturbed in the wreck, and cascaded
downward as the upper timbers of the hull rotted away. At the lower end
of the site, we found that these amphoras had completely covered over one
of the ship's anchors, which is probably still attached to the remains of
the bow. We also discovered in 1995 that the upper end of the wreck
contained a wider range of artifacts, as we recovered kitchen pottery
(plate and bowl fragments and a nearly complete pitcher) and the remains
of a hearth covered in flat, square stones. The combination of these
artifacts at the upper end and the anchor below told us that the ship had
sunk with its bow down, away from the cliff. If so, it may have tried to
anchor and been blown stern-first into the rocks.
This past season, we have expanded the excavation areas opened in
1995 and concentrated on the upper half of the site, where we expect to
find the majority of small finds, such as weights, scales, tools, and
personal effects. We have also worked at removing as much of the
amphora cargo as possible, so that we could get a preliminary look at the
hull timbers underneath and assess their condition. In 1995, we had
found numerous small fragments of wood on top of the amphoras, possibly
the remains of the deck. While they did not tell us much about the ship
itself, they led us to expect very good preservation farther down in the
mud. We were not disappointed.
Our team comes from all over the world, drawn to Turkey by its rich
heritage. Many are students, some from Texas A&M; University in America,
some from Middle East Technical University, Istanbul and Bilkent
Universities. They are the future of nautical archaeology, and some will
go on to direct their own excavations. Others are permanent staff of
INA, professional archaeologists who have worked on excavations in
Turkey, Africa, America, and Europe for over twenty years. All work
together, sharing both the exciting and the tedious tasks of an
archaeological excavation.
Along the starboard side of the ship, we exposed a large area of the
stacked amphoras. Their orientation showed us that the ship lies at a
slight slant across the slope, and that much of the cargo had shifted
forward and to starboard either when the ship hit the bottom or as the
hull disintegrated over the centuries. We also found that some of the
cargo had spilled out to the starboard side and had been buried rather
deeply under the sand.
The amphoras that we recovered have revealed some interesting
details. We examine the contents of every jar very carefully, since
minute remains of the original contents often survive. Most of these
amphoras carried wine, and many still contain grape seeds and bits of
stems. One
amphora produced over 400 seeds, suggesting very low quality wine or that
this particular amphora received the last dregs from the press. Another
amphora was completely full of olive pits. We recovered several jars
that still had their wooden stoppers sealed in place with pitch -
might they contain wine, protected all these centuries? We carefully
removed the stoppers, breaking the seal with great anticipation, but
unfortunately, every one of the sealed amphoras was completely filled
with mud. Many of the amphoras also have graffiti scratched into them.
These marks are normally the initials of the owners, and two owners wrote
out their names in full: Nikitas and Leon. There may also be a
connection with the Christian church, since two of the amphoras may carry
the abbreviation for "bishop."
Mixed in with the amphoras in the upper part of the wreck are many
of the smaller finds we expected from the stern. Since the wreck lies on
a slope and the stern had been badly
shattered on the rocks, it is not surprising to find small objects in
this area. In 1995 we had found a large pitcher; three more were found
this past season, including two that lay on top of each other , partially
underneath two of the stacked amphoras. We were surprised to find even
fragile items preserved in between shattered amphoras - the most
beautiful find of 1996 was a small, blue-green glass goblet, no more than
10 centimeters (4in) high and as thin as a light bulb. Provisions for
the voyage may be represented by several teeth (probably from a pig) and
the leg bone of a large bird found among the storage jars.
For many of the excavation staff, the most exciting find of the
season was the hull of the
ship. It first appeared as a short length of timber with neatly beveled
edges, oriented along the
length of the ship. As excavation proceeded, we debated what part of the
ship it might be. We
discussed the possibility that it might be the keelson, the principal
internal strengthening timber, but we do not yet know enough about
medieval ships to be sure what a ninth century keelson
should look like, or even if a ninth-century ship should have one. One
of our most experienced
divers, Dr. Faith Hentschel, spent two weeks carefully clearing the mud
from around this timber,
gradually exposing more of the structure. Four frames came to light, and
beneath them the keel
and outer planking. The planking still shows the marks of the saw used
to cut it. The frames
have fallen forward, in much the same way that the amphoras have, and the
port side has broken
away, but the edges are still crisp, and it is still possible to see in
the curvature of frames and taper of planks something of the shape of a
ship that traveled the Turkish (then Byzantine) coast so long ago.
At the end of August, we packed all the artifacts very carefully and
shipped them back to
the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology, where they will eventually
go on display for all
to see. Erhan Özcan, the representative of the Ministry of Culture,
organized the transport,
keeping track of where each amphora and stone tile was packed and where
it was stored in the
Museum. The fragile timbers were covered with sandbags and mud to
protect them. The
bamboo roofs were taken down, the camp beds put away, the tools packed up
and the dive gear
sent back to INA's Bodrum headquarters. Over the winter, the artifacts
will be conserved, the
dive gear serviced, and new students trained. We will look carefully
over the drawings and
photographs we made in the field, and scour the libraries for information
on where and when the
ship and its cargo were made. In the spring, shortly before the
villagers of Selimiye begin to
harvest wheat, we hope to return. The roofs can go back on, the sand and
winter debris covering
the site can be removed, and we will dive back into the Middle Ages.
For complete article with pictures visit ATLAS site
http://www.turknet.com/atlas/index.html
