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THE INA
QUARTERLY

Fall 2004 Volume 31 s No. 3








The INA Q Iarterl 1


Volume 31* No. 3


Fall 2004


3 An Archaic Laced Hull in the Aegean:
The 2003 Excavation and Study of the
Pabu( Burnu Ship Remains
Mark E. Polzer

12 Evidence for a 6th-Century BCE Lifeboat and its
Anchor?
Elizabeth S. Greene and Mark E. Polzer

19 News and Notes


On the cover: INA archaeologist Robin Piercy lifts the stone anchor of the Papuc Burnu shipwreck while observers in
the INA submersible Carolyn look on. The INA excavation of the 6th century BCE site near Bodrum, Turkey, is the focus
of this issue of the INA Quarterly. Photo: S. Matthews.







November 2004 by the Institute of Nautical Archaeology All rights reserved.
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Editor: Christine A. Powell







An Archaic Laced Hull in the Aegean:

The 2003 Excavation and Study
of the
Pabuc Buru Ship Remains

Mark E. Polzer


"There's hull-and it's sewn!" This pronounce-
ment flashed up onto my screen in the e-mail sent to me in
College Station, Texas, by Asaf Oron, Pabuc Buru project
conservator and archaeologist. It was mid-October, 2002,
and I had left the excavation the previous month to return
to Texas A&M University for the fall semester. The excava-
tion was supposedly winding down when I left; we thought
the site would be clean in a week or so. This enigmatic
wreck continued to offer up enough ceramic sherds and


other finds to keep the team working well into October
(INA Quarterly 30.1, 3-11). Before I left, the wreck had pro-
duced a limited number and variety of artifacts, including
28 intact amphoras and approximately 150 partial ampho-
ras, a collection of plainware bowls, pitchers, Ionian cups,
and a large stone anchor stock. After my departure, the
work progressed farther down slope, but the number of
finds diminished, with recovered artifacts limited mostly
to sherds. Then, to everyone's surprise and delight-none


KALIMNOS






44M


PABU ( BURNU
SHIPWRECK
0 10 50 km

Fig. 1. Location of the shipwreck at Pabuf Burnu, Turkey.


INA Quarterly 31.3



















Fig. 2. Don Frey and Mural Tilev videorecord Ihe
wood finds in 2002.


more than my own-wooden remains of the hull appeared
(fig. 2). Excavators raised 2 large fragments before inclem-
ent weather forced the cessation of work at the site. Team
members covered the hull area with sand and plastic and
left it for the following summer. There would be a second
season after all!

The Excavation
After a busy off-season making plans, renewing
grants, and purchasing equipment and spare parts, Prof.
George Bass and I returned to Bodrum in early May for
the 2003 campaign. The summer's primary objective was
to recover the remaining wood fragments and resume ex-
cavating the area for more of the hull. The season would
be short, since our research and diving vessel, Virazon, and
most of our team had to leave at the middle of July to con-
duct a survey for ancient shipwrecks along Turkey's south-
ern Aegean coast (INA Quarterly 31.2, 10-16). We had 6
weeks to complete our work.
The 2003 season began on June 2 with a meeting
in the Mary and Lamar Tooze, Jr. Library at INA's Bodrum
Research Center (INA-BRC) and our small team made its
first acclimation dives that afternoon. In less than a week
we had moved the underwater "telephone booth" to its
new location and reinstalled its Plexiglas dome. We set
safety tanks around the site, assembled and floated airlift
pipes, and installed and measured in datum towers and
grid lines. We then began excavating, first removing the
protective overburden that had safeguarded the partially
exposed wood over the winter. All this was accomplished
while at the same time entertaining a large number of
guests. Ben Crouch, Texas A&M University Executive As-
sociate Dean of Liberal Arts, and his wife Nancy, friends


Rob Raisin and Sally Noble, and Paula Artal-Isbrand, a con-
servator at the Sardis excavation, all visited us that first
week. They dived on the site in INA's submersible Carolyn.
Professor Erdeniz Ozel from Dokuz Eyliil Universitesi in
Izmir, and Harun Ozdas, former representative of the Turk-
ish Ministry of Culture and visiting scholar at Texas A&M
University, also joined us for a couple of days to test their
sub-bottom profiler. Other visitors to the excavation included
Dr. Marilyn Perry, President of the Kress Foundation; Nina
Kopriil, Director of the Joukowsky Foundation, and her
daughter Sureyya; Dick and Mary Rosenberg; Bodrurn
Kaymakan, Osman Ekci, and the Bodrum Chief of Police;
documentary maker Haluk Cecan, his collaborator Dr.
Gung6r Muhtaroglu, and cameraman, Selman Kahraman;
Bilge GineSdogdu and Sukran Senyiz from the Bodrum
Museum's conservation laboratory; Selda Ozhan, team
member from 2002; Kristen Biehl and Ant Oziizeu; Koray
Atalag; Demet Canimoglu; and Nilgiin Sbnmez, an English
teacher at Marmara College in Bodrum.
Our excavation efforts concentrated around the
2002 wood find spot (N15, fig. 3), an area of deep sand
where the bottom slopes down at about 36 degrees before
falling away into deep water. Our working depths ranged
from 42 m (140 feet) at the telephone booth to 45 m (150
feet) at the deepest extent of the wreck. The main area in-
cluded grid squares L13 to S18, which the team excavated
completely. In addition, we dug 2 vertical trenches on ei-
ther side of this area; 1 during the early weeks of the exca-
vation from grid squares K14 to K18, and the other at the
end of the excavation from T15 to T18. The purpose of these
trenches was to see if any of the discovered planking runs
continued beyond our work area. Neither trench intersected
any wood. The excavated area measured 16 m by 12 m


[NA Quarterly 31.3




















*14 A,*
b 0

i .

*e *
BiC X; ^r
_I EIB ^a o 4; <


S Large Stoke
4 AcorC Stock .


a
I


30 m -










AP
fV








.e


Plan: S. Matthews and M. Polzer
Fig. 3. Excavation site plan, with the 2 x 2 meter grid superimposed over the 2003 excavation area.


INA Quarterly 31.3


.4'



















Fig. 4. Team members haul the industrial compres-
sor ashore from Millawanda.


(192 square meters) and we removed up to 1.5 m of sand
from each square.
Our methodology was much the same as that used
in 2002: INA-BRC served as excavation house and artifacts
depository, and diving operations were conducted from
Virazon. The big difference this season was that we rented
a diesel-powered industrial air compressor. This was placed
on the rocks of Pabuc Burnu to supplement Virazon's com-
pressors in powering our airlifts (fig. 4). The old compres-
sor coughed and sputtered black clouds of exhaust each


I s o 10. Drawing: B. GiineSdogdu

Fig. 5. Stone anchor or weight found in 2003.


morning as we cranked it up, but it ran reliably through-
out the month and a half we worked, providing abundant
air that greatly improved the efficiency of our efforts on
the seabed. With so much sand to remove, this proved cru-
cial to our success.

The Artifacts
During our short season, excavators raised 385 arti-
fact lots (bags of artifacts), about half as many as were re-
covered in 2002. These included 1 more intact amphora plus
amphora sherds representing approximately 59 additional
complete amphoras, bringing the total number of amphoras
to 238; smaller ceramics and numerous fineware sherds-
some with black glaze and others with a pale beige slip-rep-
resenting 1 or more Ionian cups, and 2 pitchers; probable
pieces of large coarseware bowls or mortaria like those
found in our first season; a small stone anchor or weight
(fig. 5); possible ballast pebbles; and various organic. More
so than in any other part of the overall site, the sand in this
area was littered with grape seeds. This and the general
lack of amphoras in this portion of the site may indicate a
partial cargo of grapes, perhaps carried in baskets, sacks,
or other perishable containers.
The small stone anchor, with its notched center, is
similar to the large stock found and raised in 2002 (fig. 6),
though it measures less than 0.5 m long and weighs just
over 7 kilograms dry. Its diminutive size and crude manu-
facture suggest that it is not a stock from one of the ship's
anchors, and sparked much debate about its true use. These
musings are detailed in a companion article in this issue
(pp. 12-18).


INA Quarterly 31.3


















Fig. 6. Hiiseyin Aldemir and Feyyaz Subay haul
the large stone anchor stock onto the stern of Vi-
razon during the 2002 season.


The Hull
The focus of 2003 was finding and recovering more
wooden hull remains, recording all such fragments in de-
tail, and investigating what they tell us about ship con-
struction in the Archaic Aegean. In total, we recovered 7
substantial fragments of the ship's hull planking, all made
from Austrian (also known as Black) Pine (Pinus nigra), a
softwood common around the Mediterranean and the
Black Sea. The wood was desalinated in INA-BRC's Nixon
Griffis Conservation Laboratory and is now being con-











Fig. 7. The author records one of the hull fragments
in INA-BRC's Nixon Griffis Conservation Labo-
ratory after the excavation.


served in polyethylene glycol (PEG). After wrapping up
the excavation and assisting briefly with the following ship-
wreck survey, I was able to make a detailed study of these
valuable artifacts with the generous support of the Mary
A. Tooze Scholarship in Nautical Archaeology (fig. 7).
Though these 7 pieces of wood represent less than 2% of
the ship's original hull, they have much to say!
The most prominent and important feature on all
but 1 of the fragments (a small piece with no preserved


Photo: V. Kaya


INA Quarterly 31.3




















4..............
* .-


Fig. 8 (left). Plank detail of the tetrahedral notches and ligature holes indicative of laced edge fastening.
Fig. 9 (right). A surviving wooden ligature peg.


edges) is the row of tetrahedral notches and oblique holes
lining their edges (fig. 8). These holes have been docu-
mented on a number of Mediterranean shipwrecks from
the 6th to the 4th centuries BCE, and indicate that the ship's
planking was laced together with ligatures made from fi-
brous plants (unfortunately, none of the ligatures survive
in our hull fragments). The Pabuq Burnu remains, how-
ever, represent the first laced boat discovered and exca-
vated in the Aegean.
When constructing a laced hull, the shipbuilder
first cut each tetrahedral notch into the plank with 3 strokes
of a chisel. Then, placing his drill tip into the notch-which
supported it at the proper inclination-he bore each corre-
sponding ligature hole down at an angle to the lower, in-
ner corner of the plank's edge. The location of the exit hole
minimizes the opening exposed to the outer surface of the
hull, protecting the ligatures from abrasion damage and
breakage. After lacing the adjoining planks tightly together,
the builder hammered small wooden pegs into the holes
to secure the ligatures and make the holes watertight. In


Photos: M. rolzer


the largest of the Pabu Buru hull fragments there are 8
such pegs. They are seated in holes that were originally
located under a frame, which is obviously what helped pre-
serve them during the subsequent 2.5 millennia that the
hull lay at the bottom of the sea (fig. 9). They are made of
alder (alnus), a hardwood found throughout Europe and
the Mediterranean basin.
Typically in this construction method, the ancient
shipbuilder also secured the strakes of the hull with widely-
spaced, cylindrical wooden dowels seated in holes drilled
into their adjoining edges. These joins served to align and
hold the planks while the builder laced their edges together,
but also provided longitudinal stiffening to the hull. Of
the Pabuc Burmu planks, 2 were similarly joined (fig. 10a).
However, 2 other planks were aligned instead with rect-
angular mortise-and-tenon joins-small, widely spaced, and
never pegged (fig. 10b). This phenomenon may represent
an early attempt to incorporate mortise-and-tenon joinery
into laced shipbuilding. Rectangular tenons provide more
longitudinal rigidity than round dowels. The builder of


oros: IVi. rolLer


Fig. 10. Edge alignment joins: (a) a cylindrical wooden dowel, and (b) a rectangular wooden tenon,


INA Quarterly 31.3





































rnuiuti: M. r
Fig. 11 (left). Rows of paired lashing holes and two treenail holes testify to where a frame was once affixed to the hull.
Fig. 12 (right). Large rectangular opening that may have accommodated some sort of through beam.


the Pabuc Buru ship may well have recognized this, and
so used tenons in at least part of the hull's construction.
Over subsequent centuries the use of this joinery would
increase-with the tenons becoming larger, more closely
spaced, and locked into their mortises with wooden pegs-
until it became the near universal choice for construction
of ancient Mediterranean ships.
A number of other construction features are pre-
served on the hull fragments. The locations of 5 frames are
indicated on 3 of the fragments. The frames were origi-
nally attached to the hull with wooden treenails and liga-
tures, as evidenced by the rows of paired lashing holes
running transversely across the planks' surfaces (fig. 11).
Although no actual frames survived, we can obtain much
information about the ship's framing from these preserved
attachment holes. The frames were widely spaced, almost
82 cm on average, and were quite large, having an average
bottom width (sided dimension) of about 15 cm.
A single plank has a large rectangular hole, mea-
suring approximately 7 cm by 9 cm, in precisely the posi-
tion where one would expect a frame (fig. 12). The pur-
pose of this hole is uncertain, but it may well have accom-
modated a through beam of some sort, perhaps support-
ing a partial deck. It seems clear in any case that a plank


containing such a large opening could only have come from
a part of the hull located above the waterline.
A small and highly eroded fragment that measures
less than 38 cm long and just over 17 cm at its widest point
provides another clue as to the original location of our
planks within the hull. One of its edges is curved and lined
with fastening holes (fig. 13). Though badly eroded and
with no vestige of tetrahedral notches, their presence and
the curved shape of this plank fragment suggest that it is a
hood end, the terminus of a strake that joined to an end
post.

Similar Laced Hulls
For further evidence of what our ship might have
looked like, we need to turn to 4 Archaic wrecks excavated
in the Western Mediterranean off the coasts of France, Italy,
and Mallorca that have provided similar examples of laced
hulls, but with slightly different details. All 4 wrecks have
Greek origins in the 6th century BCE and all yielded hull
remains that are completely laced. Of these hulls, 3 em-
ploy dowels exclusively between the strakes, but 1 is dow-
eled only between the 1st strake (the garboard) and the
keel, utilizing unpegged tenons between the rest of the
planking strakes. The hull from Pabuc Bumu is similar in


INA Quarterly 31.3
















Fig. 13. A small fragment that may be the hood
end of a strake.


Photo: M. Polzer


its dual usage of both types of alignment joins. However,
if indeed our fragments are from above the waterline on
the hull, then the placement of the joins within the hull are
quite different.
These vessels all had round bottoms and were con-
structed shell-first, before frames were added for reinforce-
ment. The frames were purposefully carved in a specific
fashion-with rounded tops and sides that taper to a nar-
row foot-that facilitated lashing them to the hull (fig. 14).
Their bottom surfaces are notched where they passed over
the planking seams so as not to damage the lacing. Part of
a top-timber-the upper-most piece of a frame-survived
on 1 of the wrecks. It has a rectangular cross-section and,
like the Pabuc Burnu frames, was treenailed to the hull as
well as lashed.


Conclusions
The recovered cargo and shipboard items of the
Pabuc Bumu ship, the preserved features in its hull re-
mains, and comparisons to similar wrecks from the West-
ern Mediterranean enable us to say a fair amount about
the ship and its hull despite the paucity of remaining ma-
terial. The ship was probably a local trader that plied the
coastal waters of the southeastern Aegean and met its de-
mise sometime after the middle of the 6th century BCE. It
was constructed shell-first, with its planks joined edge to
edge by lacing in conjunction with both round wooden
dowels and unpegged rectangular tenons. The hull was
then strengthened with the insertion of substantial, though
widely-spaced, full frames with rounded, trapezoidal
shapes. Lashing and treenails attached the frames to the


Fig. 14. The reconstruction of a central section of
the hull from wreck 9 at Place Jules- Verne, France.


Courtesy: Centre Camille Jullian, CNRS France


INA Quarterly 31.3


Ivy


-1E-[ IIRE









planking, the latter at least in the upper parts of the hull. from Western Mediterranean wrecks, highlights regional
The ship probably had a round bottom and, judging from variations of construction and development within a gen-
the cargo spread, was 15-20 m long. erally common shipbuilding tradition. Pabuq Burnu's most
The mixed use of dowels and tenons represents, important legacy, however, is that it has provided, finally,
perhaps, a relatively early integration of mortise-and-tenon the first physical evidence of a laced boat in the Aegean,
joinery into laced hull construction, and thus a transitional supporting the theory that this method of shipbuilding may
period in the Aegean shipbuilding tradition. This devel- be Eastern Greek in origin, rather than an Etruscan or West-
opment, viewed within the context of similarly-built hulls ern Mediterranean tradition.

Acknowledgments: A successful excavation requires the support of myriad people and organizations, and the following
words of appreciation do not begin to fully convey the importance of each one's contribution. Special thanks go first to
Director George Bass, for his patience and counsel during a season that seemed much longer than its six weeks. Unfor-
tunately, Liz Greene was unable to join us in the field this season, but she remains active in the ongoing study of the
finds and in coordinating the project's various research efforts. Our excavation at Pabuq Bumu was permitted by the
Turkish Ministry of Culture and supported by Oguz Alpozen, director of the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archae-
ology. Financial support for the 2003 excavation season came from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology and Texas
A&M University, the Smothers-Bruni Foundation, the Eugene McDermott Foundation, the National Geographic Soci-
ety, and INA board member Claude Duthuit. However, the work in the field was accomplished successfully and in so
short a time only because of the talented and dedicated team which I had the privilege of directing. What we lacked in
numbers we more than made up for with experience and hard work. Veteran team members included Asaf Oron, who
served as project conservator and archaeologist; Sheila Matthews, who once again performed her magic with
PhotoModelerTM to map the site; INA Adjunct Professor Faith Hentschel, Turkish archaeologist Orkan Koyagasioglu,
and Turkish archeology student Volkan Kaya, who made sure all the artifacts were registered, catalogued, photographed,
and put to bed each night in the Nixon Griffis Conservation Laboratory; Turkish archaeology student Evren Tiirkmenoglu,
who discovered the first new hull fragment of the season; INA staff members Don Frey and Robin Piercy, who provided
much-needed experience and good cheer; our ship captains and submersible pilots Feyyaz Subay and Murat Tilev; and
Virazon crew members Zafer GiI and Bayram Kosar, who kept the ships and machinery running, filled our scuba tanks,
and performed so many other thankless chores without complaint all summer. For two weeks we once again enjoyed
the company of Corioli Souter from the Maritime Museum of Western Australia. The two new additions to our team
were Texas A&M University graduate students Timothy Kane and Jon Swanson, who joined us for the month of June
before leaving to work on other INA projects. We were also fortunate to have again as our Commissioner Yapar Yddiz,
from the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology. I am especially grateful to Mary A. Tooze for her generous
support of my research of the hull remains. That effort was aided by my dear friends Asaf, Volkan, and Orkan, who
spent countless hours with me in the wet and smelly confines of the wood lab moving hull fragments in and out of their
water storage, assisting with photographing and measuring each fragment, inputting data to the computer, and pro-
viding moral support that helped keep me going during those last exhaustive weeks of the summer before I returned to
College Station. I am in their debt. a,
Suggested Readings

Kahanov, Y. and P. Pomey
2004 "The Greek Sewn Shipbuilding Tradition and the Ma'agan Mikhael Ship: A Comparison with Mediterranean
Parallels from the Sixth to the Fourth Centuries BCE." Mariner's Mirror 90.1 (February), 6-28.

Greene, E.
2003 "Endless Summer: The 2002 Excavation Season at Pabuq Burnu, Turkey." NA Quarterly 30.1, 3-11.

Pomey, P.
1997 "Un example d'evolution des techniques de construction navale antique: de l'assemblage par ligatures a
l'assemblage par tenons et mortaises." In D. Meeks and D. Garcia, eds. Techniques et &conomieantiques et midituales:
le temps de I'innovation. Colloque international (C.N.R.S.). Aix-en-Provence: Editions Errance, 195- 203.

Steffy, J. R.
1994 Wooden Ship Building and the Interpretation of Shipwrecks. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.


INA Quarterly 31.3








Evidence for a 6th-Century BCE Lifeboat and its Anchor?

Elizabeth S. Greene and Mark E. Polzer


No one who has an interest in underwater archaeology can have missed the multimillion-dollar blockbuster
Titanic, and no one who watched the film can forget the tragic scene of the ship's demise. The band proudly plays as
crew members herd wealthy women and their children onto small lifeboats that, an attentive audience remembers, can
never hold all of the passengers. As Leonardo di Caprio and Billy Zane run through the ship fighting for Kate Winslet,
lower class passengers try to escape from their locked quarters in the flooding bowels of the ship. Men offer bribes and
threaten with guns to obtain precious seats on each tiny launch, until at last, the ship goes down, leaving a trail of
lifeboats and bodies bobbing in the frigid seas of the North Atlantic. This modem image evokes far older tales.
The ancient romance Leucippe and Clitophon by Achilles Tatius, a Greek author from the 2d century CE, records
a storm of titanic proportion. The hero and heroine of the story, having taken passage with a Syrian merchant ship, face
their own mad rush to the "lifeboat," or-more plausibly-the ship's dinghy (3.2-4):

Three-decker waves rose up from all sides-from the bow, from the stern-and crashed into
each other....Winds and waves were at war. We could not stay in one place, so violently did the deck
quake and heave beneath us... The pilot gave the order to jettison all cargo: no distinction was made
between gold and silver and other valuables, all alike was tossed over the rails. Many of the merchants
laid their hands on their own goods and energetically heaved their hopes for profit overboard. By now
the ship (naus) was stripped of all its cargo, but the storm had not spent its force. At last the pilot gave
up. He abandoned the rudder, surrendered the ship to the sea, got the lifeboat (epholkis) ready, told the
crew to get in, and started down the ladder. They hustled down at once, right on each other's heels.
Then followed a fearful scene of fighting hand to hand. The men in the lifeboat tried to cut the
cable that tied it to the cargo vessel; the passengers were all eager to jump down into it at the spot
where they had seen the pilot hauling in the cable, but those in the lifeboat refused to let them on,
threatening with swords and axes to strike anyone who tried to board. Many on the ship tried to arm
themselves with makeshift munitions-fragments of an old oar, pieces of bench planking. The sea had
now made force its natural order, and a most novel naval encounter ensued. For fear that the lifeboat
(epholkis) would swamp under the added weight of more passengers, the crew hacked away at poten-
tial boarders with knives and hatchets; the other side leaped over the rails, swinging clubs and bats.
Some had just got their fingers on the lifeboat (skaphos), but slipped off into the sea; others scrambled
aboard and struggled with those already there (trans. B. Reardon).


Loun esy: Lentre e.ammue jumuan, L rrance
Fig. 1. Mosaic detailing the stern of a large ship with dinghy attached at the entrance
to Ostia, Rome's harbor. Rome, 3rd century CE.


INA Quarterly 31.3

















Fig. 2. Graffito of the ship Europa towing its din-
ghy, here outfitted with a small square sail.
Pompeii, 1st century CE.


Drawing: M. Poizer, after A. Maiuri


The vivid scene relates the raging winds and crash-
ing waves of a storm at sea. As the ship founders, merchants
and sailors toss goods overboard to lighten the ship-to no
avail. The steersman calls his crew to clamber down into the
"lifeboat," skaphos or epholkis in the original Greek, terms used
interchangeably for a small dinghy rather than a larger ship
or naus. Roman mosaics and graffiti preserve pictorial evi-
dence for this sort of vessel (figs. 1-3), the dinghy or tender,
generally towed from the stern of a sailing ship, and used to
carry passengers, crew, or supplies from an anchorage to
shore or into the narrow recesses of a harbor.
Achilles Tatius suggests an alternate use for such
a dinghy into which the ship's passengers desperately try
to jump before the steersman manages to cut it free. The
small skiff, designed for light transport rather than rescue,
cannot hold all of the ship's passengers and the storm poses
a dire threat for the remainder.


Nearly 2 centuries later, the novelist Heliodorus
records a similar scenario in his Ethiopians, as pirates rather
than stormy seas threaten a new set of young lovers. A
crew member shouts the warning (5.24):

"It's a gang of pirates!..."A tremor ran
through the merchantmanat this announce-
ment. Though she was becalmed, a storm
raged on board her, and she was buffeted
by a welter of cries of alarm and despair
and disordered running in all directions: as
some members of the crew sought refuge
in the bottom of the ship, others encouraged
one another to put up a fight on deck, while
others again resolved to jump into the ship's
dinghy (skaphos) and escape (trans. B.
Reardon).


Fig. 3. A ship graffitofrom Ostia depicting a large
merchant ship with its dinghy in tow.










Drawing: M. Polzer, after P. Pomey


INA Quarterly 31.3
























rnoto: u. rrey


Fig. 4 (above). The small stone anchor from Pabuc Burnu.

Fig. 5 (right). Frederick van Doorninck and George Bass inspect the large
stone anchor stock on the stern of Virazon in 2002.


The novels' scenes might have been borrowed by
the producers of Titanic, as panicked passengers seek some
means of escape from their imperiled ship. Fortunately, in
both cases, our novels' hero and heroine survive as their
vessels weather both storms and pirate attacks. The pres-
ence of these lifeboats, however, poses the question: what
happened when an ancient ship wrecked at sea? Did the
passengers swim away or escape in a dinghy? Might this
explain the curious absence of human remains on ancient
shipwrecks, or the disappearance of small valuables on
wrecks too deep to have been salvaged in antiquity? At
the moment of danger, is there really time to escape in the
ship's dinghy or would it too sink to the bottom of the sea?
In his recent National Geographic article on the excavation
of the Classical shipwreck at Tekta5 Burnu, George Bass
ponders these very questions; we mused over these same
topics during the excavation of the Archaic shipwreck at
Pabuc Burnu. To such queries, the artifacts from the wreck
may offer answers.

Stone Anchor Stocks from the Pabu Burnu Shipwreck
During the 2003 excavation season of the 6th-century
BCE shipwreck at Pabuc Burnu, archaeologist Sheila Mat-
thews uncovered a stone object in the downslope area of
the site, the focal region of an excavation campaign de-
signed to investigate the area where hull remains had been


discovered in 2002 (see pp. 3-11 of this issue). The dark
gray color, basaltic composition, and worked surface of
the artifact distinguished it from other rocks that littered
the wreck's surface, these others looking as if they had been
sheared from the cliffs overhanging the site (fig. 4; see also
fig. 5, p. 6). Matthews wondered if this dark stone could be
a small anchor.
The stone was certainly smaller than the stock dis-
covered in the 2002 excavation season (INA Quarterly 30.1,
3-11). Then, we raised a large anchor stock from the cen-
tral region of the wreck, 1.65 m in length, weighing 115 kg,
and chiseled from a hard white limestone (fig. 5). As sug-
gested by a reconstruction in the Bodrum Museum of Un-
derwater Archaeology (fig. 6), the stone stock would have
been sheathed in a wooden frame. The stock provided the
weight for the anchor and ensured the proper orientation
of its wooden flukes on the seabed. Unfortunately, no
wooden remains were preserved with our large stock. Such
stone anchor stocks represent an interim stage of develop-
ment from simpler types of stone anchors such as those
excavated from the Bronze Age shipwreck at Uluburun-
heavy chiseled rocks with holes through which a rope could
be tied (INA Quarterly 18.4, 4-10), but before molded lead
stocks such as those found on the Tekta$ Burnu shipwreck
(INA Quarterly 26.4,9), or bronze and iron anchors of more
traditional shapes. Similar large stone stocks have been dis-


INA Quarterly 31.3




































Fig. 6 (above). A reconstruction of a wooden anchor with stone stock in the
Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology.

Fig. 7 (right). Three possible reconstructions for the small stone anchor or
stock.


Drawing: M. Polzer, after G. Kapitin


covered throughout the Mediterranean-from shipwreck
sites, anchorages, and in temples where they were dedi-
cated by sailors or ship owners as thanks to the gods who
enabled a successful voyage. Perhaps the most famous of
such anchor stocks is a partial one from the Greek sanctu-
ary at Gravisca, the ancient port of Tarquinia, Italy. This
stock, originally about 2.5 m in length, bears a dedicatory
inscription to Aeginetan Apollo from a certain Sostratus.
As Herodotus records (4.152), Sostratus of Aegina was fa-
mous for making a greater profit on his wares than all other
Greek merchants. A stone stock from Aegina preserves a
dedication to Aphrodite Epilimenia, an epithet represent-
ing the goddess' protection of ports and anchorages.
While large stone stocks are quite frequently found
on land and underwater sites in archaeological contexts
dating from the 6th to the 4th centuries BCE, the smaller
anchor from Pabug Burnu presents more of a mystery. In


its general appearance, the small anchor resembles the larg-
er stock: one end tapers gradually from 11.8 to 7.6 cm, the
other is more rectangular in section, ranging in width from
12.5 cm near the center to 12.3 cm at the end. The crudely
chiseled central channel of the stone is 10.4 cm in width
and spans a 5.9 cm section of the anchor's total length. Its
shape resembles those reconstructed in Gerhard Kapitin's
anchor categories 6, 7, or 8 (fig. 7). Kapitin suggests that
such stones may have served as anchors themselves, sim-
ply wrapped with a rope, or may have been attached to a
wooden shaft and flukes to aid in efficiency. As with the
larger stone anchor stock, no wooden or metal artifacts
were discovered in association with the stone; in this case,
it seems most likely that the stone was never intended to
be attached to a stock, but was simply wrapped with rope
and lowered. In contrast to the 1.65 m length and 115 kg
weight of the large anchor stock, the smaller stone mea-


INA Quarterly 31.3










sures a mere 0.45 m in length and weighs only 7.32 kg.
This represents a difference of 73% in size and 94% in
weight.
What function might this stone have served? Pos-
sible uses include: a hawser weight for the rope of a larger
anchor, serving the purpose of the heavy chain that weighs
down contemporary ships' anchors; a small drifting an-
chor; the leading weight of a fishing net; or perhaps most
intriguing, the small anchor of the ship's dinghy. Nearly a
dozen finds of stone objects of similar size and weight have
been discovered in harbor and anchorage sites off the Black
Sea coast of Bulgaria and are described by their excavator
Bojidar Dimitrov as the anchors of small boats.

Remains of the Ship's Dinghy?
Possible support for the identification of the stone
as the anchor from the ship's dinghy comes from its ar-
chaeological context on the seabed. The small anchor was
found in close proximity to 1 planking strake (UM-5), 2
pieces of which were excavated in 2003 (fig. 8). This plank
measures just over 20 cm in width and approximately 3


cm thick, making it the narrowest and thinnest of the tim-
bers we discovered. Fragment UM-6, discovered
downslope of UM-5, is not fully preserved in its width,
but presents a similar thickness of 3.5 cm. By contrast, the
best preserved of the larger plank fragments have an aver-
age width of over 30 cm and a thickness of 4.2 cm; repre-
senting a differential of nearly 50%. All of the planks ex-
hibit the tetrahedral notches and ligature holes indicative
of laced construction.
While the larger planks all extend in a generally
north-south orientation on the sea floor, the two smaller
fragments lie roughly perpendicular to them with an east-
west orientation. Interestingly, both of these smaller tim-
bers were found with their outboard surfaces lying face-
up on the seabed, whereas the other planks were positioned
with their interior surfaces visible. Such an orientation sug-
gests that the larger planks came from the ship's hull itself
as it collapsed on the sea floor; the smaller planks may be
from a different structure. Further, the distance between
the lashing holes through which frames were attached on
plank UM-5 indicate a frame dimension of only 7 cm, less


Fig. 8. Plan of the hull remains and small anchor stone of the Pabuj Burnu shipwreck.


INA Quarterly 31.3










than half the width of the frames attached to the larger
planks.
The similarities in construction details between
the larger planks we believe to be part of the hull and
the smaller planks are remarkable, even in terms of the
variety of alignment joins. In addition to lacing holes,
mortises are visible on UM-5, while a single dowel hole
can be seen on UM-6. This perhaps suggests that the
smaller planks may also be associated with some part
of the main hull's superstructure. However there is an-
other way to account for the relative size of the smaller
fragments, their outboard-facing position, their perpen-
dicular orientation with respect to the other timbers, and
the evidence for narrower framing elements. We might
imagine a scenario in which the ship itself landed on
the sea floor on top of its dinghy, pressing it into the
sand and preserving the timbers discovered in associa-
tion with the small anchor. The evidence, though cir-
cumstantial at best, is enticing.

Concluding Thoughts
In the 4th century BCE, the orator Demosthenes
presented the treachery of Zenothemis and Hegestratus
who attempted to cheat their creditors out of the return on
their maritime loan. After receiving payment for their orig-
inal cargo, the two merchants attempted to scuttle their
ship by cutting a hole in the bottom and then escaping in
the ship's boat, here described with the term lembos, an-
other word for a small tender (32.5-7):


But immediately on getting the mon-
ey, they sent it home to Massalia,and putnoth-
ing on board the ship. The agreement being,
as is usual in all such cases, that the money
was to be paid back if the ship reached port
safely, theylaid a plot to sink the ship, so that
they might defraud their creditors. Hegestra-
tus, accordingly, when they were two or three
days' voyage from land, went down by night
into the hold of the vessel, and began to cut a
hole in the ship's bottom, while Zenothemis,
as though knowing nothing about it, re-
mained on deck with the rest of the passen-
gers. When the noise was heard, those on the
vessel saw that something wrong was going
on in the hold, and rushed down to bear aid.
Hegestratus, being caught in the act, and ex-
pecting to pay the penalty, tookto flight, and,
hotly pursued by the others, flunghimself into
the sea. It was dark, and he missed the ship's
boat (lembos), and so was drowned (trans. AT.
Murray).

After Hegestratus' drowning, Zenothemis tries to convince
his crew to depart with him in the dinghy, leaving the ship
to founder. But the moneylender's agent prevents
Zenothemis from accomplishing the deed and
Demosthenes's prosecution bears witness to the repercus-
sions of such criminal activity. Although the attempt fails,


~noto: A. uron
Fig. 9. A gulet in the Bodrum marina with its dinghy in tow.


INA Quarterly 31.3










Demosthenes' speech documents the possibility of using
the ship's tender for escape from a sinking craft.
We do not possess any record of the size of the
grain-carrier sailed by the defendant Zenothemis, but com-
parisons with ships described in other orations of
Demosthenes suggest larger vessels than the modest ship-
wreck at Pabuc Buru. In his speech against Lacritus,
Demosthenes condemns the merchant for failing in his prom-
ise to his creditor to sail to the Black Sea with a cargo of three
thousand jars of Mendean wine. According to the lawsuit,
Lacritus transported only 450 amphoras at one stage, then
replaced this small cargo with an even scantier one-80 jars
of spoiled wine from the island of Kos-but the vessel must
have been quite substantial if it could plausibly carry its al-
leged cargo. Would a modest ship of 15-20 m, as we suggest
for the Pabu Burnu wreck, have needed a tender as it set
out on a journey perhaps no farther than from
Halikamassos to Knidos? Today, car ferries make the jour-
ney in scarcely 2 hours. Small yachts make the same trip in
just a few hours. And yet, even the small sailboats jour-
neying between the 2 peninsulas trail their dinghies for
safety and convenience (fig. 9).
Perhaps they too, like the archaic poet Alcaeus, fear
the possibility of storm and shipwreck (fr. 326 LP):

I fail to understand the strife (stasis) of the
winds; one wave rolls in from this side, an-
other from that, and we in the middle axe
carried along in company with our black
ship, much distressed in the black storm.
The bilge-water covers the maststep; all the


sail lets the light through now, and there
are great rents in it; the anchors are slack-
ening ... my feet both stay entangled in the
ropes ... (trans. D. Gerber).

In this vivid picture of a ship in distress, a poetic
fragment often read metaphorically as a description of civic
conflict, Alcaeus records what must have been a familiar
scene in the 6th century BCE. Sailors try to ride out a storm
as water fills the boat, the sails are torn, and anchors, set
out to stabilize the threatened ship, cannot control its mo-
tion. The speaker of the poem describes himself as caught
up in the ship's lines, perhaps unable to make his escape
from looming disaster. Tangled in the ropes, unable to sta-
bilize his vessel, Alcaeus' sailor faces disaster and may sink
to the bottom along with ship, anchors, and all. In such a
scenario, a dinghy would be useless-disaster strikes too
quickly for action. Alcaeus' anchors, along with those from
the shipwreck at Pabu< Bumnu, would never have reached
a temple for dedication!
While we cannot say with certainty that our nar-
row planks and small anchor represent a dinghy and its
anchor, nor can we explain with precision how a tender
would have gone down with the ship and survived in part,
the artifacts offer themselves for speculation. It is our hope
and expectation that further research on the artifacts and
hull timbers from the shipwreck at Pabuq Burnu and other
excavated shipwrecks throughout the Mediterranean may
yield answers to the use of such small anchors aboard an-
cient ships, even if their preservation suggests something
less than a storybook ending for the vessels' sailors.


Acknowledgments: The authors are grateful to a number of people for inspiration and assistance in this light-hearted
article. George Bass' musings about the Tekta* Burnu shipwreck's demise set our curiosity in motion, Oguz Alp6zen,
Director of the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology, expedited all phases of research on the Pabuc Burnu
wreck. Asaf Oron weighed the mammoth anchor. Cemal Pulak provided geological identifications for our anchor
stocks' composition. Support for the Pabu Burnu excavation was provided by the Institute of Nautical Archaeology,
Texas A&M University, the National Geographic Society, the Smothers-Bruni Foundation, the Eugene McDermott
Foundation, and Claude Duthuit. s,


Suggested Readings


Reardon, B. P
1989 Collected Ancient Greek Novels. Berkeley: Univer-
sity of Califonia Press (includes Achilles Tatius,
Clitophon and Leucippe and Heliodorus, Ethiopians).
Bass, G.F.
2002 "Golden Age Treasures." National Geographic
(March) 102-17.
Casson, L
1971 Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World.
Princeton: Princeton UP.


Dimitrov, B.
1979 "Underwater Research along the Southern Bulgar-
ian Black Sea Coast in 1976 and 1977." International
Journal of Nautical Archaeology 8.1, 70-9.
Gianfrotta, P.A.
1977 "First Elements for the Dating of Stone Anchor
Stocks." IJNA 6.4, 285-92.
KapitAn, G.
1984 "Ancient Anchors-Technology and Classifica-
tion." IJNA 13.1, 33-44.


INA Quarterly 31.3








George Bass Named Phi Beta Kappa
Updike Memorial Scholar
George F. Bass, INA Co-
founder and Distinguished Professor
Emeritus at Texas A&M University,
was named the Phi Beta Kappa Up-
dike Memorial Scholar for 2004-05. Of
the fourteen outstanding persons se-
lected by the Phi Beta Kappa Society
(PBK) for this year's Visiting Scholars
Program, Dr. Bass is the only one cho-
sen as a named scholar. He was previ-
ously the recipient of the 2002 National
Medal of Science, the Gold Medal for
Distinguished Achievement of the
Archaeological Institute of America,
and the National Geographic Society's
La Gorce Medal and Centennial
Award.
The Visiting Scholars make 2-
day calls on universities and colleges
that have PBK chapters. While there,
they meet with undergraduates, give
lectures and seminars, and deliver a
major address that is open to the pub-
lic. Since it is not possible to fill all of
the chapters' requests, priority is giv-
en to those institutions not located in
major metropolitan centers or that do
not have extensive resources on which
to draw for similar programs.
George Bass is scheduled to vis-
it 9 colleges and universities. In Fall
2004, he went to Alfred University in
Alfred, New York (where he was the
first lecturer to visit the new PBK chap-
ter); Syracuse University, Syracuse,
New York; Fordham University, The
Bronx, New York; Amherst College
and the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst; and Swarthmore College,
Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. In 2005,
Dr. Bass will be at Santa Clara Univer-
sity in California on February 28 and
March 1; at Bowling Green State Uni-
versity in Ohio on April 4 and 5; and
at Centre College in Danville, Ken-
tucky, on April 7 and 8.
Students and faculty at these
institutions will have an opportunity
to discuss with him some of his most
important discoveries in 45 years of
nautical archaeology. The lecture at


News and Notes


Syracuse University, typical of the se-
ries, described how the shipwreck at
Uluburun yielded 20 tons of artifacts
from the Age of King Tutankhamen,
including the oldest known diptych,
the oldest known tin ingots, the old-
est known glass ingots, the largest
hoard of Canaanite gold and silver
jewelry, the only gold scarab of
Egypt's famed Queen Nefertiti, and
much more.
The visiting scholar program
was established by Phi Beta Kappa
in 1956 with the goal of enriching the
intellectual atmosphere of partici-
pating institutions. PBK is the na-
tion's'oldest academic honor society,
founded in 1776 as an advocate for
the liberal arts and sciences at the
undergraduate level. It has pursued
its mission of fostering and recog-
nizing excellence in those disciplines
for more than 200 years. Each year,
PBK and its affiliates raise and dis-
tribute more than $1,000,000 to ben-
efit students and scholars through
scholarships, lectureships, book and
essay awards, summer institutes for
teachers, and funds for visiting schol-
ars.

New Web Site Locates Dive Spots
Many nautical archaeologists
take a busman'ss holiday" by sport
diving. Two Dutch dive enthusiasts
recently launched a new website to
help divers locate worldwide dive Lo-
cations for their vacations. By, making
a selection from a list of sea creatures,
the months they would like to go div-
ing, and the region they would like to
visit, visitors to www.divestart.com
can view a range of relevant results.
Worldwide divers can access this in-
formation for free but with a message:
"Preserve the marine environment."
Geerten van Hooff and Mark Kater
were trying to find online information
for their own dive trips when they re-
alized that there was no single loca-
tion providing structured information


on where one might find whale sharks
or manta rays, for example. They be-
gan combining the information they
gathered into a spreadsheet, which is
now accessible through the website.
Although the primary source of infor-
mation is dive operators, the quality
of the information is controlled by re-
views from consumers. Kater says,
"We hope to gradually expand this
resource helping divers worldwide to
have as many quality underwater en-
counters with marine life as possible.
Hopefully, generations to come will
still be able to enjoy the same marine
beauty as we do now." Quarterly read-
ers will no doubt hope that the data-
base can be extended to include
appropriate wrecks in archaeological
parks.

Protection, Conservation, and
Exploitation of Underwater Cultural
Heritage
The fourth volume in the "Med-
iterraneum" collection of stud-
ies on the protection and exploitation
of the cultural heritage is now avail-
able. Following the prefaces by George
F. Bass and Luigi Serra, the volume,
edited by Fabio Maniscalco, has two
sections: (1) international and nation-
al regulations concerning the under-
water cultural heritage; and (2)
individual examples, arranged by geo-
graphic area, illustrating a number of
issues concerning the world's under-
water cultural patrimony. There is also
an extensive bibliography and panel
discussions. The work includes contri-
butions by Dr. Bass and several other
scholars associated with INA
projects.The volume will be valuable
not only for experts, but also others
who care about safeguarding the
world's underwater cultural heritage.
For more information on the volume
e-mail massaeditore@libero.it or
osservatoriobc@tin.it. There is also a
web page: http://web.tiscali.it/
mediterraneum_isform.


INA Quarterly 31.3