AIA Archaeology Hour | “Excavating a Shipwrecked Marble Column” with Deborah Carlson
Last night — Wednesday, April 17, 2024 at 8:00 p.m. — I watched the final webinar for this season of AIA Archaeology Hour. This talk was sponsored by the AIA Chicago Society and featured guest speaker Deborah Carlson, who works at Texas A&M teaching about ships and shipwrecks of Ancient Greece and Rome, along with being the president of the non-profit organization Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA). Her talk “Excavating a Shipwrecked Marble Column Destined for the Temple of Apollo at Claros” described the challenges of working underwater while explaining the history behind what she and her team discovered. Carlson explained that the INA and AIA are “sister organizations”. The INA recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, as “Father of Underwater Archaeology” Dr. George Bass founded the organization in 1973.
The shipwreck was found near Kizilburun in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Turkey, an area with a wide range of wreck dates ranging from the 16th century BC to the 11th century AD. Carlson described the area as “barren, uninhabited, remote stretch of coastline. No electricity. No running water. It was about 45 minutes by boat the nearest tiny fishing village.” The wreck was excavated between 2005 and 2011. Beginning in 2007, archaeologists used a catamaran as an excavation platform and worked during the three summer months. Divers descended 45 to 48 meters (about 150 to 160 feet) to the drums of a marble column resting on the seafloor. To carefully remove sediment from the drums, the team used airlift pipes, a pair of six meter long irrigation pipes with compressed air acting like a vacuum.
The shipwreck had four pairs of column drums, each of which weighed between six and seven tons. Through measuring each drum and comparing the size to the capital or intended top of the column, the archaeologists determined it was a Doric column. The column was not yet fluted or carved with decorative channels, as this would be done on-site once the column had been assembled. The arrises — points between the flutes — are easily broken, so these were added last to refine the building. Also found at the wreck was a lustral basin used for washing in sacred sanctuaries, a littler basin, and marble slabs to be carved into grave stelai or headstones. Similar stelai housed at the Izmir Archaeological Museum date from the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, serving as clues for the time period when the ship sank.
The archaeologists also found amphoras, two-handled clay jars used for food storage. Carlson noted that “the wonderful thing about amphoras, like people, is their diversity” with a wide range of traits to research, including type of material, contents, markings, stamps, and graffiti. The type of amphoras suggested a Roman connection to the Western Mediterranean, although one Egyptian Bitronconique amphora was found at the site. It may have belong to the shipwreck or been dumped at a later date, creating “one of the many chronological puzzles” at the site. Other ceramics at the site included lamps, jars, and bowls, all fairly standard for the Hellenistic period.
One special artifact was a terracotta mold-made figurine known as a Herm. These tiny, pillar-like sculptures were supposed to protect people from underworld spirits who might cross over to the land of the living. The name came from the god Hermes, who was the patron of sailors and merchants. Carlson joked that this Herm “did a fairly lousy job protecting the ship, because the voyage obviously ended in disaster.”
The archaeologists need to move the drums, so Carlson contacted a Houston, TX based company called LiftAll that manufactured underwater slings used by the oil industry. The president of the company happened to be a Texas A&M alum, so he donated specialized lifting slings to the team. The complex system used two separate pairs of 4,000 pound lift balloons, lifting ropes, and a thirty-foot long chain. The archaeologists devised a system of filling the balloons one pair at a time to gently raise the drums so they did not “rocket to the surface”. They flipped over the drums to produce what Carlson called “the drum garden, sort of like a beer garden, but full of column drums”. This allowed for a more accurate measurement of the eight drums.
The ship carrying the drums had a cargo load of about sixty tons, which might seem like a large amount, but is apparently “not very large when it comes to ancient marble cargoes”, as the biggest ships carried up to 300 tons. A boat with a shallow draft may have been needed to get closer to port. The area was difficult to navigate, as strong winds caused currents in the water that made the area “a very difficult place to navigate with a square sail”.
The drums are currently stored and cleaned at the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology, located inside a crusader castle built during the 15th in southwestern Turkey. Geologist and archaeologist Scott Pike at Willamette University tested the stable carbon and oxygen isotopes in the drums to determine that they were most likely from the quarries of Proconnesus, located on the northwestern part of Turkey near the Sea of Marmara. Interestingly, most temples with Doric columns from the approximate time period were located further north of the wreck site near Kizilburun, so the ship had already passed them. The most logical destination was Claros, a temple of Apollo used by oracles. The size of the unfinished, shipwrecked drums aligned with the finished and fluted drums at Claros. However, the temple at Claros had twelve-drum columns, not eight-drum columns, with with each drum receiving a letter from the Greek alphabet to show where it should be stacked.
Carlson ended the talk by answering Q&A questions about diving and how to get involved in this niche field through earning a degree or volunteering. This quick paced talk with plenty of pictures and diagrams was the perfect way to end the season of AIA Archaeology Hour talks. I look forward to next year’s lineup.
Watch the full talk here: