Study confirms date of famous ancient shipwreck off Cyprus

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When scientists excavated the wreck of an ancient Greek merchant ship off the northern coast of Cyprus in the 1960s, they found an astonishing time capsule from a crucial period in the Mediterranean after the death of Alexander the Great.

However, determining the date of the Kyrenia shipwreck with any degree of accuracy has proved difficult, and some previous scientific dating has led to 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 wooden beams from the ship, almonds from the cargo, and a game piece called an astragalus, which was made from animal bones and used like a dice, they concluded that the ship sank around 280 BC. While this is slightly later than previous scientific dating estimates, it fits better with the archaeological finds.

Sturt Manning, professor of classical archaeology at Cornell University, called the Kyrenia ship “an iconic ship from the early Hellenistic period, central to the history of ancient maritime technology.”

The ship was about 14 metres long, built of wood with lead sheathing, had a mast with a square sail and probably a crew of four. It sank about 1 mile offshore. On board were nearly 400 amphorae – large ceramic storage vessels with two handles – some filled with almonds and others apparently with wine, as well as heavy millstones as ballast.

“It was probably travelling to or from Cyprus, and the cargo – amphorae types – suggests it was traded in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. The main cargo consisted of amphorae of a type associated with the island of Rhodes in the southeastern Aegean,” said Manning, lead author of the study published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Using several lines of evidence, researchers concluded that the ship was built between about 345 and 313 BC and sank between about 286 and 272 BC.

The death of Alexander in 323 BC, who had conquered much of the Mediterranean and beyond, led to regional power struggles. Cyprus became a contested area, pitting Alexander’s successors ruling in the Aegean region against those in Egypt, with the latter gaining control of the island.

The remains of the Kyrenia ship are on display in a museum in Cyprus.

“Ancient shipwrecks provide archaeologists with unique sources of information to reconstruct the human past. At underwater sites like the one where the Kyrenia was buried, archaeological materials decay much more slowly. Therefore, organic materials such as wood, seeds or ropes can be preserved much better than on land,” said Brita Lorentzen, an anthropology professor at the University of Georgia and co-author of the study.

Just last week, the discovery of a shipwreck in deep waters off the coast of Israel was announced, dating to around 1300 BC.

“Ships were an important means of transport in ancient times. They enabled people to move from one place to another, build social networks and exchange trade goods and ideas. The contents of a shipwreck can tell us exactly what items were traded or exchanged, where and how people moved by sea, which groups of people were in contact with each other and how they were influenced by these early social and economic networks,” said Lorentzen.

The wood of this ship was embalmed decades ago with the chemical compound polyethylene glycol (PEG) to preserve it on land, making it difficult to use radiocarbon dating, a method of determining the age of an object based on the decay of a radioactive form of carbon over time.

“The addition of PEG prevents ship wood from drying out, shrinking and turning to dust in the water. But it also contains petroleum and lots of carbon from long-dead organic remains,” said Lorentzen.

The researchers developed improved methods for removing PEG so that the wood could be radiocarbon dated. They also used radiocarbon dating for almonds and tragacanth.

Analyzing tree rings also helps date ancient wood artifacts. The researchers found that a scientific standard used in analyzing wood from that period to convert radiocarbon measurements into calendar dates for the Northern Hemisphere was incorrect, so they updated it.

“The work here is relevant to ancient shipwrecks in general,” Manning said.

(Reporting by Will Dunham, editing by Rosalba O’Brien)