Yassıada Shipwreck
Excavated off the tip of the Bodrum peninsula (Turkey) in the early 1960s, this 7th-century CE shipwreck represented a landmark in the early development of Mediterranean underwater archaeology and the techniques of ancient ship construction. The study of its cargo assemblage, undertaken in collaboration with the Institute of Nautical Archaeology and one of the original investigators, Fred van Doorninck, remains ongoing. Work in the lab and in the field in Bodrum has focused on multifaceted analysis of the ceramics and especially the transport amphoras: their fabrics, forms, and the remarkable levels of standardization they signal. Together with 3D modeling of the ship and digital reconstruction of its load, these efforts will offer a new interpretation of the wreck within the broader political and socioeconomic world of late antiquity.
