The 2005 Chios ancient shipwreck survey : new methods for underwater archaeology

Author Posting. © American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2009. This article is posted here by permission of American School of Classical Studies at Athens for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Hesperia 78 (2009): 269-305, doi:10.2972/hesp.78.2.269.In 2005 a Greek and American interdisciplinary team investigated two shipwrecks off the coast of Chios dating to the 4th-century b.c. and the 2nd/1st century. The project pioneered archaeological methods of precision acoustic, digital image, and chemical survey using an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) and in-situ sensors, increasing the speed of data acquisition while decreasing costs. The AUV recorded data revealing the physical dimensions, age, cargo, and preservation of the wrecks. The earlier wreck contained more than 350 amphoras, predominantly of Chian type, while the Hellenistic wreck contained about 40 Dressel 1C amphoras. Molecular biological analysis of two amphoras from the 4th-century wreck revealed ancient DNA of olive, oregano, and possibly mastic, part of a cargo outbound from Chios.We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, the U.S. National Science Foundation; the SeaBED AUV and the efforts of its team were funded by the Censsis Engineering Research Center under NSF grant no. EEC9986821