Introductions

3 AM Fri 15 August
It’s a crazy hour. I woke up with my head swimming with the impressions and agendas of the last 36 hours. Maybe writing a few of them down will clear my too-busy brain…

There’s a scene from an ancient story that sticks in my head. Three thousand years ago an Egyptian named Wenamun sailed to Lebanon in search of cedar on behalf of his pharaoh, Rameses IX, who needed the wood to build a ceremonial barge for the sun-god, Amun-Re. In the surviving fragments of papyrus we can read Wenamun’s account of his encounters with priests, pirates, harbor masters, bribes, robberies, despair and wonder. The scene that sticks in my head is his description of a meeting with the king of Byblos: “And I found him squatting in his loft and when he turned his back against the window, the waves of the Great Sea of Syria were breaking against the rear of his head.”

That picture came to me as I sat on the balcony of my host’s house, just off the waterfront of Saranda. Auron (Ani) Tare, the Albanian who is facilitating this project, sat in a wicker chair with his back to the harbor, his face framed by the sparkling waters, speaking to me of his dreams for developing maritime archaeology in Albania. Ani is a man of big visions and many connections, our guide through the logistics of setting up a project in Albania.

It is always a challenge to figure out how to work in a foreign country. The convolutions of recent history in Albania and the resultant diverse, often conflicting, never clearly expressed layers of officialdom and bureaucracy make this a difficult place in which to figure out how to get things done. RPM and now WID are working in Albania thanks to Ani’s efforts; my entrée here is through them and thus through him. So it is good, finally, to meet this mover and shaker. He is not an academic or an archaeologist; his interest in archaeology is a passion, not a vocation. That works against and for him, and for those who hitch their wagon to his star.

That first evening I also met two other people who are vital to the success of the Butrint shipwreck project: George Robb and Jeff Royal of RPM. All last summer and already for two weeks this summer, they have been conducting a survey of the Albanian coast, primarily by means of multibeam sonar and an ROV, supplemented with some SCUBA diving. (Their webpage is linked at the upper right of this page). They are the discoverers of the wreck I am here to investigate.

Like Ani, George Robb is involved with underwater archaeology as a matter of passion. He likes to figure out the technology that enables discovery and then he likes to go hunting with it. Thank goodness. That passion and the fact that he has and is willing to devote the means needed to pursue it is all to the benefit of academics like me. I boarded his ship, passed by the massive ROV, into the bank of computers and screens that is the command-post for RPM’s operations, and realized again the broad expanse of skills needed to conduct archaeology. This ship and its equipment are worlds away from the shelves of books that are my main tools of analysis.

Jeff Royal has chosen to bridge the gap. An archaeologist by training, he took a gamble and went the non-traditional route; instead of pursuing a university career, he joined RPM where his job is to define and ensure the archaeological agenda. Jeff and I both started in the same place, but whereas I chose to delve deeply into a specified time and region of expertise, Jeff has had to develop general familiarity with the wide array of ships and cargoes that RPM has discovered. Both kinds of archaeologist are vital to the continued growth of our field.

I spent all day Thursday on the RPM research vessel watching the team work. The task of the day was to check anomalies previously revealed by the multi-beam survey. This involves sending the ROV with its sonar, cameras, maniples, and suction/blowing capacities to find out and explore whatever caused the anomalous reading. I’ll tell you straight away that today was exciting only for me — the RPM crew was not thrilled by the results of the day’s search (a shoe, newspaper, other rubbish and natural features). It is one thing to intellectually understand the process of remote survey — I have read about it and teach it in my seafaring class — but it is entirely different actually to participate. It was a beautiful Mediterranean day, a bright sun and sparkling seas. Those of you who know me will find it hard to imagine that I spent that entire day inside a dark cabin, watching video feed. The thrill of (potential) discovery kept me glued to the screen. I gained a much better appreciation for the human dimension of the technology. Today’s anomaly-reconnaissance, for example, needed not only the ROV, its accoutrements, and the associate computer technology, but also the human skills of the person who flies the ROV, and the people who analyze what is being projected on the screen and then further direct the ROV’s actions. I realized the many, many hours of experience it takes to interpret the flecks of sonar, the pings of the multibeam, the bits of seabed captured by the ROV lens. It takes humans to figure out the story in all that data. Thank goodness.

I did get my swim in, finally, at sunset, in the still-clear harbor of Saranda. I looked back at the shore, at the burgeoning development of this town, and hoped that this place would not go the way of most of the Mediterranean coast. The years of isolation and the subsequent decade of turmoil retarded the development of the Albanian coast and thus protected it. But it is catching up. Too fast?

Tomorrow I go diving, and the WID folk arrive.