Sorry I left you hanging just as I was about to reach the punch line: the wreck itself, my purpose in coming to Albania.
It was discovered last summer by the RPM crew. As I mentioned in an earlier posting, their mission is to find the wrecks. That takes enough time, energy, and money. Their intent is then to encourage others to take up the challenge of excavation. And so I came to Albania, to explore the possibility of excavating the wreck discovered in 2007.
I came at the invitation of George Bass, whose name you may recognize as one of the founding fathers of underwater archaeology and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (http://ina.tamu.edu/ ). Dr. Bass has had a long-standing interest in the Albanian coastline. Already in the early 90s, soon after the country opened to the outside world, one of Bass’ students, Elizabeth Greene (http://www.brocku.ca/classics/greene.php), spent a year in Albania, working with Auron Tare to start up explore the possibilities of underwater archaeology in Albania. But the situation was still too unsettled. Now is a much more promising time.
Dr. Anastasi joined Derek, Liz, and me for 3 ½ mornings of diving on the wrecksite. DSO Joe captained the RHIB and Ardiola came along to translate. We would load up ourselves and our gear in the RHIB and get underway about 7:30 AM. It was lovely, zipping across the morning-calm blue. The atrocious burgeoning holiday construction projects in the vicinity of Saranda soon petered out and we raced by coastline still mostly rugged and empty, thanks to the fact that Butrint has been delared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Butrint — in legend, founded by Aeneas on his journey from Troy to Rome; archaeologically attested as a sanctuary of the Greek god of healing, then made a Roman colony by Caesar, a port city through the Ottoman period) is an incredible site and I could easily get diverted into a blog entry about it. But I shall restrain myself and instead refer you to the excellent website http://www.butrint.org/index.php and encourage you to visit the site.
We sped past the riverine entrance to Butrint, through the narrow strait separating Corfu and Albania. The morning seas and winds were usually calm, but by the afternoon stiff northwest breezes whipped whitecaps into the waves and it was easy to understand that ancient ships would have had difficulties standing off from this shore.
Our ship had banged up against the rocks and either sank or spilled its load immediately. And here I came upon an unexpected — but it should have been obvious — question: how to identify a shipwreck? Of course, it is easy when you come upon a hull or a coherent heap of cargo. But when is a jumbled spill of amphoras the remains of a shipwreck, and when is it just a pile of stuff dumped overboard in a desperate attempt to prevent a shipwreck? I have to admit that I never carefully considered this question. Let me tell you what I saw on the seabed, and maybe you’ll have some thoughts about this.
(Note: I shall post photos for the description below, asap. For now, just the text. Please check back in a week or so.)
The shoreline is steep and rocky and that same topography continues underwater. Within about 50 of the shore, the seabed has plunged to 25m. Above water, sparse vegetation anchored in shallow soil covers the hillside; below the waterline, however, the steep slope is covered by a deep layer of thick silt. Not much protrudes from that heavy silt until one reaches a ledge of bedrock, at about 23m down.
A lead anchor stock (whereas modern anchors are weighted by their chains, ancient anchors used only ropes and therefore required a weighted element -- the bar at the top and perpendicular to the anchor shank in the image here), seated in the hollow of a boulder, was our visual hallmark for wreck’s location. About 25 amphoras lie strewn along the ledge for about 20-25m on either side of the anchor stock-boulder. Many are broken but into relatively large fragments and it looks like most of their pieces lie in close proximity. A further ca. 15 amphoras lie a bit further down the slope or appear in sporadic isolation in the silt layer above the ledge. And there are traces of more amphoras deeper in the silt. 
The majority of the amphoras are of a single type (“Corinthian B”), a few of a second type (“Corinthian A”), and there are a few intrusive pieces. (The wind/current/topographical conditions that led to one shipwreck would also have caused others; most (all?) near-shore shipwreck assemblages include some intrusive objects.) Is this a shipwreck, or is it simply jettisoned cargo? I think it is probably a wreck because I find it difficult to envision how jettisoning would have been thought effective in such close proximity to the shore. Or even/especially if this was a desperate last-ditch effort, how there would have been time to unload so many amphoras so quickly that they all landed together on the seabed. Under what circumstances would a captain still be dumping large quantities of cargo so close to shore? At this point, isn’t it too late? The anchor stock in their midst may have been cast in a desperate last stand, though it could also have been a spare, stowed on board; it can be argued either way.
Accepting the hypothesis that these are the remains of a wreck, should we excavate it? I shall leave you to think about that question until tomorrow…
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