By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When scientists in the 1960s excavated the wreckage of an ancient Greek merchant ship off the north coast of Cyprus, what they found was an incredible time capsule of a pivotal period in the Mediterranean world after the death of Alexander. the big.
But determining the date of the sinking of the Kyrenia with any kind of precision has proven difficult, and some previous scientific dating has produced conclusions that conflict with the archaeological evidence. Researchers have now calculated this timeline with new precision, using improved techniques that they say can also be applied to dating other ancient shipwrecks.
By analyzing organic material from the wreck, including the ship’s timbers, almonds from its cargo, and a game piece called an astragalus, made from animal bone and used as a dice, they concluded that the ship sank around 280 BC. slightly later than previous scientific dating estimates, but better matches archaeological evidence.
Sturt Manning, professor of classical archeology at Cornell University, called the Kyrenia ship an “iconic ship of the early Hellenistic period, central to the history of ancient maritime technology.”
The ship, about 14 meters long, was built of wood with lead sheathing, with a mast supporting a square sail and probably carrying a crew of four. She sank about a mile offshore. On board were around 400 amphorae – large ceramic pots with two handles – some filled with almonds and others apparently with wine, along with heavy millstones for ballast.
“It was probably heading to or from Cyprus, and the cargo – types of amphorae – suggests that it was being traded in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean area. The main cargo comprised amphorae of a type associated with the island of Rhodes in the southeast Aegean.” , he said. Manning, lead author of the study published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Using multiple lines of evidence, researchers determined that the ship was built between 345-313 BC and sank between 286-272 BC.
The death in 323 BC of Alexander, who had conquered large areas of the Mediterranean region and beyond, led to regional struggles for power. Cyprus became a contested area pitting Alexander’s successors, who ruled in the Aegean region, against those of Egypt, with the latter gaining control of the island.
The remains of the ship Kyrenia are on display in a museum in Cyprus.
“Ancient shipwrecks contain several unique sources of information for archaeologists to reconstruct the human past. In underwater sites like where the Kyrenia was buried, archaeological materials decay much more slowly. As a result, organic materials such as wood, seeds or rope can be very better preserved than on land,” said Brita Lorentzen, professor of anthropology at the University of Georgia and co-author of the study.
The discovery of a deep-water shipwreck off the coast of Israel, dating to approximately 1300 BC, was announced last week.
“Ships were a critical source of transportation in the ancient world, which allowed people to move from place to place, create social networks, and exchange goods and ideas. The contents of a shipwreck can tell us specifically what items were being traded or exchanged, where and how people moved by sea, which groups of people were in contact with each other and how they were impacted by these early social and economic networks,” said Lorentzen.
The wood from this ship was embalmed decades ago using the chemical compound polyethylene glycol (PEG) to preserve the wood on land. This has complicated the use of radiocarbon dating, a technique for determining the age of an object based on the decay over time of a radioactive form of carbon.
“The addition of PEG prevents ships’ wood from drying out, shrinking and turning into dust outside the water. But it also contains petroleum, with a lot of carbon from long-dead organic remains,” Lorentzen said.
Researchers developed improved methods to remove PEG so that radiocarbon dating could be used on the woods. They also used radiocarbon dating on the almonds and astragalus.
Analysis of annual growth rings in trees also helps govern the dating of ancient wooden artifacts. The researchers found a discrepancy in a scientific standard used in analyzing wood from this period to convert radiocarbon measurements into calendar dates for the Northern Hemisphere, and updated it.
“The work here is relevant to ancient shipwrecks in general,” Manning said.
(Reporting by Will Dunham, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
