Maritime Archaeology: a Mediterranean Perspective

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jurica Bezak. Igor Miholjek.

As the leading team in Croatian underwater archaeology, the Department for Underwater Archaeology of the Croatian Conservation Institute carries out systematic and protective research on underwater archaeological sites along the Croatian coastline of the Adriatic Sea. The Department's field of work covers a large time span and encompasses prehistory, classical antiquity, the Byzantine period, medieval and post-Mediaeval shipwrecks dating from the 11th to the 18th centuries, and wrecks from World...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlo Beltrame.

The Mercurio was a brig of the Italian-French fleet that was sunk by an English brig in the north Adriatic Sea in 1812. Underwater investigation of the site has allowed the research team to document a part of the prow and the stern and to recover about 900 finds. What are the goals of the investigation of a military ship from the beginning of the 19th century? Can it add new information to our knowledge of ship construction; of the equipment, crew, and everyday life aboard a military ship of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Papoulia.

The area of the eastern Mediterranean is a focal point for the study of the earliest acts of globalisation. Palaeolithic archaeology provides the tools for the analysis and interpretation of the material record of the early hominins who passed through and occupied this part of the world. However, since the early pleistocene, the constant environmental fluctuations between glacials and interglacials have caused major alterations in the ice sheets resulting in sea-level fluctuations. Consequently,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rita Auriemma. Francesca Silvestrelli. Antonella Antonazzo. Carlo De Mitri. Maria Teresa Giannotta. Federica Mauro. Florinda Notarstefano.

Torre Santa Sabina is a bay along the Apulian coast of Italy, near Brindisi (Roman Brundisium). 11,000 archaeological items, dating from the Bronze Age to Late Antiquity and the medieval period, have been recovered from the sea bottom since the  first underwater investigations in the 1970s. Stratigraphical excavations have been carried out since 2007 by the University of Salento, with the aim of understanding the sequence of layers traditionally related to the so-called "harbor dump". These...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pier Giorgio Spanu. Claudia Giarrusso. Giulia Nieddu. Alessandro Porqueddu. Massimiliano Secci.

Between the 1950s and 1960s, the Maddalena Archipelago (NE Sardinia, Italy) located within the maritime routes of the Strait of Bonifacio was been an important laboratory for testing underwater archaeological methodologies. Subsequently, the area had never been systematically investigated. Our survey project has attempted to verify the information derived from archival research and local community reports through the employment of target dives. In this context the value of the research,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pier Giorgio Spanu. Paolo Orrù. Emanuela Solinas. Raimondo Zucca.

In recent years, multidisciplinary teams from the universities of Cagliari and Sassari (Sardinia, Italy) have undertaken research on ancient Sardinian, initiating a series of Global Archaeology research campaigns. Major attention has been placed on the area surrounding Oristano (Central-West Sardinia), focusing on maritime landing sites and port facilties but also on local settlement dynamics in a territory characterised by wetlands and large lagoons, some of which formed during historical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Giuseppe Mastronuzzi. Rita Auriemma. Fabrizio Antonioli. Marco Anzidei.

The coastal landscape of Southern Apulia from Monopoli to Tarantois are characterised by gently sloping rocky coasts marked by deep rias and bays alternating with low cliffs. The presence in the past of small villages, landing places, structured harbours or cities are today witnessed along the coastline by archaeological sites both submerged and emerged. The position of quarries, tombs, sewer channels, cisterns, piers, fish tanks and shipwrecks of the Bronze Age, Classical and medieval periods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michele Stefanile.

Roman lead ingots from the mines of Carthago Nova, found in several shipwrecks in Western Mediterranean, constitute an extraordinary source for understanding the immigration of people from Campania, Southern Latium and Picenum in the newly conquered provinces of Hispaniae: an interesting historical phenomenon described by contemporary authors, and which formed the basis for the Romanization of the Iberian Peninsula. The analysis of the gentilitia inscribed on the ingots, cross-referenced with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Panagiotis Georgopoulos. Tatiana Fragkopoulou.

The representation and management of Greece's underwater archaeological heritage has recently 'set sail' from policies of almost absolute prohibition towards the recent permission of recreational diving. When past law enforcement measures attempted to gain monitoring rights and control of  underwater archaeological heritage, underwater archaeology suffered from both restrictions and a lacked of a wider community engagement which the public image of underwater archaeologists. Working within the...