During the summer of 1999, INA began the excavation of a ship that sank between 450 and 425 B.C., the Golden Age of Classical Greece, the time when the Parthenon was being built, the time of Pericles, Thucydides, Sophocles, Socrates, Herodotus, Pheidias, and others whose names remain well known. It lies about 130 feet deep off a cape known as Tektas Burnu, north of ancient Teos on the western coast of Turkey.
While building a camp on the jagged rocks of the cape, the team of up to 40 people lived for two months on Artemis, a former U.S. Navy wooden minesweeper, built in 1942, and on INA's own research vessel Virazon.
Much of the summer was devoted to preparing the site for full-scale excavation by cleaning and mapping the amphoras in the cargo. Three-dimensional mapping was accomplished by a new computerized system that combines calibrated 35 mm and digital cameras.
It is too early to guess what the ship may hold, but already it is producing a closed deposit of fifth-century B.C. tablewares, cooking pots, lamps, and storage jars, suggesting that it sank before much if anything could be removed from it by its crew.
