Uluburun shipwreck

The Uluburun Shipwreck is a Late Bronze Age shipwreck dated to the late 14th century BCE,[1] discovered off Uluburun (Grand Cape) situated about 6 miles southeast of Kaş, in south-western Turkey.[2] The shipwreck was first discovered in the summer of 1982 by Mehmed Çakir, a local sponge diver from Yalikavak, a village near Bodrum.

Eleven consecutive campaigns of three to four months duration took place from 1984 to 1994 totaling 22,413 dives, revealing one of the most spectacular Late Bronze Age assemblages to have emerged from the Mediterranean Sea[3]

Contents

Discovery

The shipwreck site was discovered in the summer of 1982 due to Mehmet Çakir’s sketching of “the metal biscuits with ears” recognized as oxhide ingots. Turkish sponge divers were often consulted by the Institute of Nautical Archaeology’s (INA) survey team on how to identify ancient wrecks while diving for sponges.[4] Çakir’s findings urged Oğuz Alpözen, Director of the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology, to send out an inspection team of the Museum and INA archaeologists to locate the wreck site. The inspection team was able to locate several amounts of copper ingots just 50 meters from the shore of Uluburun.[5]

Apparent route

With the evidence provided from the cargo on the ship it can be assumed that the ship set sail from either a Cypriot or Syro-Palestinian port. The Uluburun ship was undoubtedly sailing to the region west of Cyprus, but her ultimate destination can be concluded only from the distribution of objects matching the types carried on board.[6] It has been proposed that perhaps the ship’s destination was Rhodes, which was at the time an important redistribution center for the Aegean.[7]

Dating

Peter Kuniholm of Cornell University was assigned the task of dendrochronological dating in order to obtain an absolute date for the ship. The results date the wood at 1305 BCE, but given that no bark has survived it is impossible to determine an exact date and it can be assumed that the ship sank sometime after that date.[8] Based on ceramic evidence, it appears that the Uluburun sank toward the end of the Amarna period, but could not have sunk before the time of Nefertiti due to the unique gold scarab engraved with her name found aboard the ship.[9] For now, it is concluded that the ship sank at the end of the 14th century BCE.

The objects aboard the ship range from northern Europe to Africa, and as far west as Sicily and as far east as Mesopotamia exhibiting products of nine or ten cultures.[10] The presence of such cargo indicate that the Late Bronze Age Aegean was perhaps engaging in international trade based on royal gift-giving of the Near East.[11]

The vessel

Uluburun’s remains and distribution of its cargo indicate that the ship was between 15 and 16 meters in length. The ship is known to have been constructed in the "shell-first" method with mortise-and-tenon joints similar to those of the Graeco-Roman ships of later centuries.[12]

Even though there has been detailed examination of Uluburun’s hull, there has unfortunately been no evidence of its framing. The keel appears to be rudimentary, perhaps more of a keel-plank than a keel in the traditional sense. Dendrochronology has revealed that the ship was built with planks and keel of Lebanese cedar and oak tenons.[13] Lebanese cedar is a tree indigenous to the mountains of Lebanon, southern Turkey, and central Cyprus.[14] The ship carried 24 stone anchors, which are of a type almost completely unknown in the Aegean, but are often found in the sea or built into the temples in Syria-Palestine and on Cyprus. Brushwood and sticks served as dunnage to help protect the ship’s planks from the heavy metal ingots and other cargo aboard.[15]

Cargo

This is a list of the cargo as described by Pulak (1998).

The Uluburun ship’s cargo consisted mostly of raw materials that were trade items, which before the ship’s discovery were known primarily from ancient texts or Egyptian tomb paintings. The cargo matches many of the royal gifts listed in the Amarna letters found at El-Amarna, Egypt.

Excavation

The Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) began excavating in July 1984 under the direction of its founder George F. Bass and was then turned over to INA’s Vice President of Turkey Cemal Pulak from 1985 to 1994.[16] The wreck lay between 44 and 52 meters deep on a steep, rocky slope riddled with sand pockets.[17] Half of the staff members whom aided in the excavation lived in a camp built into the southeastern face of the promontory that the ship most likely hit, while the other half of staff lived aboard the Virazon, INA’s research vessel at the time. The excavation site utilized an underwater telephone booth, air-lifts, and a horizontal stereo-bar. The mapping of the site was done by triangulation with meter tapes and metal squares to aid in the orientation for excavators.[18] When the excavation was completed in September 1994 all efforts have been concentrated on full-time conservation, study, and sampling for analysis in the conservation laboratory in the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology in Turkey.

References

  1. ^ (Pulak, 2005 p.34)
  2. ^ (Pulak, 1998 p.188)
  3. ^ (Pulak, 1998 p.188).
  4. ^ (Bass, 1986 p.269)
  5. ^ (Bass, 1986)
  6. ^ (Pulak, 1988 p.36)
  7. ^ (Pulak, 2005 p.47)
  8. ^ (Pulak, 1998 p.214)
  9. ^ (Pulak, 2005 p.46)
  10. ^ (Pulak, 2005 p.47)
  11. ^ (Pulak, 1998 p.220)
  12. ^ (Pulak, 1998 p.210).
  13. ^ (Pulak, 1998 p. 213)
  14. ^ (Pulak, 2005 p.43)
  15. ^ (Pulak, 2005 p.46)
  16. ^ (Pulak, 2005 p. 35)
  17. ^ (Pulak, 1998 p.189)
  18. ^ (Bass, 1986 p.272)

Bibliography

Further reading

External links