#MAREMonday 33

On 04.11.2024 we present the 33rd session of our online lecture series with a contribution of

Olga Marinaki
(Universidad Complutense de Madrid)

Travelling between West and East,
a shipwreck with Roman Hispanic and African material off Kasos Island

Abstract:

In recent years, maritime archaeology in Greece has made significant progress in both the quality and quantity of the results obtained from underwater archaeological investigations in the Aegean. In the topic concerning ancient maritime trade, amphora shipwrecks are considered one of the most significant and reliable sources of information. Since the last publication of a catalogue of shipwrecks in Greek waters (around 100 by 2005/2006), systematic surveys have uncovered over 150 additional shipwrecks. Previously unrecorded overseas cargo shipwrecks from the central and western Mediterranean were recorded for the first time; a key example is the discovery of five shipwrecks with Roman African amphorae during the systematic investigation of the South Euboean Gulf. These discoveries have led to a series of preliminary publications that enriched our previous knowledge of the distribution of western amphorae cargoes in the Aegean. The extension of these efforts to the eastern Aegean through underwater surveys of remote islands such as that of Phournoi, which revealed more than 58 shipwrecks, provided new information on the character and the agents of maritime trade relations between the Aegean and the western Mediterranean during the Roman and late Roman period. A second such case concerns the systematic survey conducted in Kasos, which provided in 2020 the first Aegean evidence of a shipwreck with a main cargo of Afrikana IA and Dressel 20 type amphorae, otherwise the most widespread oil containers from the Iberian Peninsula in Roman times. The lecture aims to present the cargo of the wreck in relation to other known cases with relevant material, in an attempt to trace dots of exchange and trade networks between the East and the West in the Roman southeastern Aegean.