A shipwreck courting again to the fifth or sixth century BC discovered off the coast of Sicily has supplied proof of commerce between Sicily and historical Greece.
Buried by sand and rocks at a depth of six metres within the waters of Santa Maria del Focallo in the direction of the southeastern tip of Sicily, the wreck was first reported to the Italian Soprintendenza del Mare (Sopmare) in 2022 and mapped by divers from the Palermo-based BCsicilia, an affiliation of volunteers devoted to the safety of Sicily’s cultural heritage.
The next excavation was carried out in September by archaeologists from the Division of Humanities and Cultural Heritage of the Università degli Studi di Udine in affiliation with SopMare, with extra help from the Messina Coast Guard Diving Unit and the Port Authority of Pozzallo.
The excavation revealed the boat’s hull was constructed ‘on-the-shell’, a boat-building approach often known as ‘shell-first’, during which the hull is constructed utilizing formed planks of wooden after which the supporting inner body is added afterwards.
A number of anchors had been discovered near the wreck, together with two iron ‘T’-shaped (or fluked) anchors which most likely dated to the a lot later seventh century AD, and 4 lithic (stone) anchors which might have been modern with the date of the shipwreck.
This analysis was carried out as a part of the ‘Kaukana Undertaking’, an initiative created in 2017 to reconstruct the coastal panorama and submerged archaeology alongside the Sicilian coast between Ispica, Kaukana and Kamarina.
The most recent discovery provides one other piece to the maritime historical past of the traditional Mediterranean civilisations. On the time from which the wreck is believed to have dated, Sicily was largely underneath Greek management however engaged in a centuries-long struggle for dominance with the Carthaginian civilisation, which at occasions lay declare to nearly half of the island.
Elements of Sicily had been additionally nonetheless populated by outposts of the earlier Phoenician inhabitants.
‘This discovery represents a unprecedented contribution to the data of the maritime historical past of Sicily and the Mediterranean and highlights as soon as once more the central position of the Island within the visitors and cultural exchanges of antiquity,’ mentioned Francesco Paolo Scarpinato, SopMare Councillor for Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Id.
‘The wreck, courting again to a vital interval for the transition between archaic and classical Greece, is a treasured piece of the submerged Sicilian cultural heritage.’
Massimo Capulli, professor of underwater and naval archaeology on the College of Udine, and one of many main members of the Kaukana Undertaking, mentioned that the wreck ‘belongs to a web page of historical past during which the transition from archaic to classical Greece occurred.
‘We’re in reality confronted with materials proof of the visitors and commerce of a really historical period,’ mentioned Capulli, ‘when Greeks and Carthaginians fought over management of the seas, centuries earlier than Rome forcefully appeared on the Mediterranean.’
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