Marine Archaeology – New Underwater Discoveries January – June 2009

“During the recent past number of Maritime Archaeology Projects were launched by Archaeology Department and Central Cultural Fund (CCF) of Sri Lanka. Most of these projects were funded by UNESCO.

Even though, Archaeology Department of Sri Lanka has few divers (some are qualified others not) at Maritime Archaeology Unit, Galle, Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) has provided support in terms of divers, boats, diving equipments in big way in all successful underwater archaeology projects.

Until the Lighthouses were established by Imperial Lighthouse Service of UK in 1870, on this deadly reefs away from Sri Lankan main land, number of ships ran aground and perished. Archaeology Department of Sri Lanka has found difficult to protect these valuable maritime Archaeological site due to the simple reason that they do not have sufficient maritime resources (boats and diving equipments) and personnel to protect them.

Now, the Sri Lanka Navy is playing major role in protecting these sites. Our waters in Sri Lanka have a rich repository of cultural heritage. These forgotten treasures are vital to understanding our world history, in particular how people interacted economically and culturally in the past.

Godawaya, the village south of Ambalantota, where Walawe river falls in to sea few centuries ago (now the river has changed its flow and falls in to the sea at Ambalantota) is a historic site. The findings and excavations at ruins of ancient harbour and stone pillared dock will bring new light to the Sri Lankan Maritime Heritage.

Following action implemented to protect these historic shipwreck sites under Naval Supervision. Local Police and Archaeological Department were informed that SLN approval is required for any diving expedition in Basses reefs.

“Jim Spirek, and his team of archeologists from the University of South Carolina, geared up to dive into the harbor in search of civil war shipwrecks.

The purpose of the underwater investegation, to interpret and preserve the charleston harbor naval battlefield, gaining a clearer picture of battles that took place. Spirek and his archaeological team hope to give us new insight on the shipwrecks that litter our harbor.

‘right now we are over the site of the USS Patapsco a Union Ironclad that was sunk in janurary 18 1865’.

“Drought and dams have vastly shrunk a lake in Iraq’s western Anbar province, revealing ancient dwellings and burial sites that archaeologists fear will now be targeted by thieves.

‘We found recently opened graves with destroyed grave items around. We found some bones scattered nearby. Some of this is due to the water, but this was also due to recent activity’, said Yassin Jbara, an archaeologist supervising Haditha sites.

Recently broken ancient jars lie scattered on the lake’s banks, where an eerie forest of skeletal trees have re-emerged from water that flooded the area in 1986 when a dam was built.

Dams further up the Euphrates river and drought have vastly dried the lake over the past two years. Now the dead trees stand stark against the bleak desert landscape, and decaying birds sway in the fishing nets tangled in the tree tops.

‘There are people that dig up these pots and break them open looking for gold’, said Jbara, plucking pottery from the mud.

“Archaeologists have recovered a treasure trove of artifacts from a recently recovered ship of the infamous 18th-century pirate Blackbeard.

According to a report in the National Geographic News, some of the newfound relics add to evidence that the ship belonged to the pirate.

We feel pretty comfortable that thats what this is, said Marke Wilde-Ramsing, director of the Queen Annes Revenge project for the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology.

Underwater archaeologists from the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources have been excavating the wreck, which lies 22 feet (7 meters) underwater a few miles off Beaufort, North Carolina, since 1997.

Among the discovered artifacts is a brass navigational instrument known as a chart divider.

“Marine archaeologists have just discovered evidence of a large submerged landmass southeast of Sri Lanka. They believe it could be a legendary lost island closely linked to the culture and history of Sri Lankan people.

The discovery was made by a team of Dutch and Sri Lankan scientists based on satellite maps and underwater sample extractions from the deep sea.

Preliminary data need to be verified by a deep sea submersible expedition during 2009 – 2010, according to a member of the research team who did not want to be identified.

The landmass is estimated to be between 450,000 and 475,000 square kilometres, which is about seven times the total land area of Sri Lanka.

‘This could well be the long lost island of Irisiyawa, which is euphemistically mentioned in our chronicles and hinted at in the writings of Greek historians’, said Dr Godwin Samarawickrama, a maritime historian at the Indian Ocean Institute based in Melacca, Malaysia.

He added: ‘The existence of such an island has been speculated and talked in hush-hush terms among divers and archaeologists for decades. This is the Indian Ocean’s own version of Atlantis!’

Irisiyawa’s existence is first mentioned in the Sri Lankan chronicle of Culavamsa. Sinhalese Sandesa (message poem) writers in the 14th to 16th centuries often refer to the enormous psychological effect by sunken Irisiyawa on royal families, aristocracy and ordinary people.

Some say the legacy of Irisiyawa has continued well into the twenty first century.

Other experts are more sceptical, and point out long-standing speculations about Kumari Kandam, a legendary sunken landmass said to have been located to the south of present-day Kanyakumari District at the southern tip of India.

“Iraq is suffering one of the worst droughts in decades. While this is bad news for farmers, it is good news for archaeologists in the country.

The receding waters of the Euphrates River have revealed ancient archaeological sites, some of which were unknown until now.

For Ratib Ali al-Kubaisi, the director of Anbar province’s Antiquities Department, the drought has opened up a whole new land of opportunity.

He explains that civilization began in Anbar, next to the Euphrates River. ‘Everyone … thought that Anbar was only desert with no historical importance. But we discovered that this area is one of the most important archaeological areas in all of Iraq. This part of Iraq was the first to be settled’, he says.

In the mid-1980s, Saddam Hussein’s government dammed the Euphrates in the area, flooding a 120-mile-long stretch of land near Iraq’s border with Syria. What once was an enormous reservoir that stretched as far as the eye could see has shrunk an astonishing 90 percent since summer, officials say.

Ratib says that at least 75 archeological sites had been partially excavated before the area was flooded. They ran the gamut of civilizations — from 3,000 B.C. to the Sumerian and Roman periods. Ancient Jewish settlements were also submerged in the area.

“A Greek fisherman must have been expecting a monster of a catch when he brought up his nets in the Aegean Sea last week.

Instead, Greek authorities say his haul was a section of a 2,200-year-old bronze statue of a horseman.

A Culture Ministry announcement said Monday the accidental find was made in waters between the eastern islands of Kos and Kalymnos.

“Chinese archaeologists will start later this year to salvage a ship thought to be a Ming Dynasty merchant vessel that sank off the Guangdong coast 400 years ago, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH) said Wednesday.

The SACH approved the excavation plan early this year, it said in a statement to Xinhua. The administration hasn’t yet announced all details of the salvage plan, but the Guangdong provincial cultural heritage department will organize an excavation team, the statement said.

The 10-meter-long ship was found buried in the silt on the sea floor, about 5.6 nautical miles offshore from Shantou City, Guangdong Province.

About 200 pieces of porcelain were recovered when the ship was found in 2007. The ship could have been carrying some 10,000 pieces of porcelain, most made during the reign of Emperor Wanli of the Ming Dynasty (1573-1620). However, the earliest piece found so far dated back to the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

“An archaeologist who examined remnants of the oldest-known seafaring ships has now put ancient Egyptian technology to the test.

She teamed up with a naval architect, modern shipwrights and an on-site Egyptian archaeologist to build a replica 3,800-year-old ship for a Red Sea trial run this past December.

The voyage was meant to retrace an ancient voyage that the female pharaoh Hatsheput sponsored to a place which ancient Egyptians called God’s land, or Punt. Ship planks and oar blades discovered in 2006 at the caves of Wadi Gawasis provided a basis for the ship reconstruction.

“Ancient Egyptians may be best known for building pyramids, but internationally renowned maritime archaeologist Cheryl Ward wants the world to know that they were pretty good sailors, too.

She ought to know. Ward, an associate professor of anthropology at The Florida State University, and an international team of archaeologists, shipwrights and sailors recently built a full-scale replica of a 3,800-year-old ship and sailed it on the Red Sea to re-create a voyage to a place the ancient Egyptians called God’s Land, or Punt.

Their expedition was financed and filmed as part of a French documentary that will air internationally and on an upcoming episode of ‘Nova’.

‘This project has demonstrated the extraordinary capability of the Egyptians at sea’, Ward said.

“Ten parts copper, one part tin. It sounds like a simple equation, but the discovery of this formula — the essential proportions of bronze metal — set in motion world-changing events, forever altering life on our planet by ushering in the modern era of metalworking, mechanical invention and more.

The questions of exactly when, where and how the Bronze Age actually began remain unanswered, lost in time — archeologists date the era somewhere between 3300 and 1100 B.C.

But an exhibit underway at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art offers a revelation as to why the discovery of bronze alchemy helped to unite and elevate the disparate mud-walled kingdoms of that time, literally forging civilization as we know it today.

The exhibit centers around a shipwreck found in the Mediterranean Sea off Uluburun on the coast of Anatolia, or what is now Turkey.

Among the artifacts recovered from the ship, a trading vessel dating from the late 13th century B.C., were two consignments of metal — 10 tons of copper and one ton of tin.

“Discovered under centuries-old layers of dirt in 1948, then submerged under 20 metres of water, the ancient city of Seuthopolis is to emerge once again in a bold rescue project.

The magnificently preserved city, founded by the Thracian king Seuthes III in 323 BC, was discovered in central Bulgaria during the construction of a dam on the Tundzha river.

Despite the stunning discovery, Communist authorities went ahead with the dam and created the Koprinka reservoir six years later, in 1954, flooding Seuthopolis under 150 million cubic metres of water.

Now, a 150-million-euro (192-million-dollar) project by Bulgarian architect Jeko Tilev aims to right the wrong and expose the polis at the bottom of the reservoir to archaeologists and tourist by creating a dry well 20 metres deep and 420 metres across.

“Britain’s love of seafood is helping to destroy the nation’s maritime heritage.

That is the stark warning of marine archaeologists who say hundreds of sunken ships, from Elizabethan warships to second world war submarines, are being torn apart by trawlers – fishing for scallops and flatfish – dragging chains and cables across the seabed.

Investigations using robot submarines have revealed that serious damage has been inflicted on vast numbers of the 32,000 pre-1945 ships whose wrecks litter Britain’s coastal waters.

Examples include the recently discovered 18th-century warship HMS Victory, which led Britain’s fleet before Nelson’s flagship of the same name.

“A corroded mechanism recovered by sponge divers from a sunken wreck near the Greek island of Antikythera in 1902 changed the study of the ancient world forever.

The Antikythera Mechanism, a system of bronze gears from the 2nd century BC, was used to calculate the date of the Olympic Games based on the summer solstice.

Its mechanical complexity was unequalled for 1,000 years, until the cathedral clocks of the Middle Ages.

Archaeologists believe hundreds more wrecks beneath the eastern Mediterranean may contain treasures, but a new law opening Greece’s coastline to scuba diving has experts worried that priceless artefacts could disappear into the hands of treasure hunters.

“The French writer Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès tells how he pursued his dream of uncovering ‘fragments of raw beauty long since forgotten’ from the depths of the sea, an emotional experience very different from a treasure hunt.

Between 1986 and 2001, the novelist took part in underwater archaeological excavations off the coast of Libya, exploring that ‘unseen part of ourselves’ which must be carefully and respectfully protected.

It all began in 1985. Not long returned from his first terrestrial dig with the French archaeological mission in Libya — one of the privileges of friendship — Claude Sintes [Director of the Museum of Ancient Arles] wasted no time in sharing his experiences with me: coming from Apollonia, he had seen Cyrene, Sabratha and Leptis Magna — Greek and Roman remains surpassing in size everything we knew or could have imagined.

He said he had no idea that whole towns lay buried under the sand of the seashore in such wondrous and magnificent settings.

“The Lost City of Atlantis is still lost – despite hopes that Google Earth had located the fabled city on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.

Observers noted what seemed to be a grid of streets and the outlines of a big city on the sea floor about 960km (600 miles) off the African coast.

Experts had said this was one of the possible sites of the city described by Plato, the Greek philosopher.

“What, Google Earth has spotted the mythical city of Atlantis? Is it really the city lost under the sea, which Google Earth’s new underwater search tool has found?

Well, Bernie Bamford, a British aeronautical engineer has claimed that he has spotted a mysterious grid of undersea lines while using the Google Earth’s new underwater search tool

Bamford exacted that he spotted the strange pattern off the western coast of Africa, evidently near one of the possible sites of the legendary island, Atlantis, described by Greek philosopher Plato.

The screenshots from Google Earth displaying what appears like a city street grid on the ocean floor west of Morocco, in an area known as the Madeira Abyssal plane, were published by the London’s tabloid The Sun, on Friday.

However, Google has waved off Bamford’s findings, saying that the undersea grid lines spotted by Bamford are data artifacts rather than sunken streets; the strange pattern could be linked to the fabled sunken city.

“It was the picture that led many to believe that the mythical lost city of Atlantis had finally been discovered, more than 9000 years after it sank beneath the ocean’s waves.

An amazing photo taken using Google’s latest gadget, Google Ocean, appeared to show a grid system etched onto the ocean bed about 620 miles off the west coast of Africa.

But today a Google spokesperson cruelly dashed the hopes of scholars and romantics alike by ruling out the possibility that the lines were the remnants of an ancient civilization.

Sadly, the mysterious criss-crossing lines were explained away as sonar data collected as boats mapped the ocean floor.

The perfect rectangle was first noticed on Google’s new underwater exploration tool by a British aeronautical engineer who claims it looks like a ‘man-made aerial map’ of a city.

Atlantis experts said that the unexplained grid is located at one of the possible sites of the legendary island, which was first described by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato.

“Something happened along the shores of the Black Sea about 9,500 years ago. According to one theory, a huge flood suddenly drowned the landscape, forcing some of the planet’s first farmers to move elsewhere.

A new study paints a different picture.

‘I would say there was never a big flood’, said Liviu Giosan, a geologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Cape Cod, Mass., and lead author of the study. ‘What we showed was that it’s impossible.’

The new work fuels an ongoing debate about the geologic history of the Black Sea. Research there has lagged behind other parts of the world, and many questions remain about how water levels have fluctuated over the years.

It’s a unique place. The Black Sea is an inland sea, surrounded by Turkey, Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria. It was once a freshwater lake surrounded by rich and fertile plains.

But about 9,500 years ago, sea levels rose as the climate warmed, and saltwater poured in from the Mediterranean through the Sea of Marmara.

“The Gulf Coast Community Foundation of Venice has awarded the University of Miami (UM) $250,000 toward expansion of research and educational facilities at the underwater archeological and ecological preserve, Little Salt Spring (LSS), in North Port, Sarasota County, Florida.

The site is of enormous archeological and anthropological value due to its antiquity and exceptional preservation of ancient organic material.

The gift was announced earlier this year, during a reception in Naples, Florida, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the University’s exploration of the preserve. The site is a national archeological treasure, said Teri A. Hansen, president and CEO of Gulf Coast Community Foundation of Venice.

‘Little Salt Spring is arguably one of the most important archaeological sites in the country, and it’s right here in southern Sarasota County’, said Hansen.

‘By supporting the University of Miami’s work at the spring, we can help create a significant archaeological research facility in North Port while also providing public access and educational opportunities at this fascinating preserve.’

This unusual feature has allowed the preservation of a great deal of organic material deposited there thousands of years ago, explained John Gifford, associate professor at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and principal investigator for the project.

“Mexican authorities rejected a request by U.S.-based Odyssey Marine Exploration to comb the wreck of a Spanish galleon that sank in 1631 in the Gulf of Mexico.

The National Anthropology and History Institute, or INAH, said in a communique that the two requests presented by Odyssey in 2006 and 2008 ‘do not meet the requirements that regulations establish for archaeological investigation in Mexico.’

INAH based its rejection of the request on the fact that U.S. firm ‘neither has the intention to do research nor the backing of archaeologists or of an academic institution of recognized prestige, conditions without which it is impossible to authorize this type of initiative.’

The institution explained that the two requests by Odyssey concerned the exploration of the Nuestra Señora del Juncal, a galleon that sank in the Bay of Campeche in 1631 and that has ‘always been in the sights of treasure hunters.’

“Mexico has denied a US salvage company a permit to search for a sunken 17th century Spanish galleon off the country’s eastern shores.

The proposal by treasure-hunting Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. of Florida ‘is not intended to conduct research and does not have the approval of archaeologists or an academic institution of recognized prestige’, Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) said in a statement on Monday.

According to the statement, ‘treasure hunters have always had their eyes on’ the wreckage.

“A stunning new exhibition has opened in Turin, showcasing gold, statues, jewels and lost treasures from ancient Egyptian cities lost beneath the waters of the Nile.

‘Egypt: Sunken Treasures’ hosts over 500 artefacts pulled from the riverbed and spanning a period of 1,500 years, from the 7th century BC to the 8th century AD.

The items were rescued from the lost cities of Herakleion and Canopus and submerged sections of Alexandria, by one of the world’s leading marine archaeologists, Franck Goddio of France, over a period of 15 years.

“The Cambodian government has asked foreign partners to help bring up a centuries-old vessel discovered by divers off the southwestern coast in 2006, an official said Tuesday 10 February.

The project would be implemented in cooperation between the authority and the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies of the British University of Exeter.

Head of the authority Abdullah Ba Wazeer said the project will involve excavations at the ancient Islamic cities and ports along the Yemeni coasts.

“The General Authority for Museums and Antiquities has revealed a Yemeni-British project is underway to excavate marine monuments.

The project would be implemented in cooperation between the authority and the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies of the British University of Exeter.

Head of the authority Abdullah Ba Wazeer said the project will involve excavations at the ancient Islamic cities and ports along the Yemeni coasts.

“Scientists have found proof in Bermuda that the planet’s sea level was once more than 21 meters (70 feet) higher about 400,000 years ago than it is now. Their findings were published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews Wednesday, Feb. 4.

Their findings were published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews Wednesday, February 4.

Storrs Olson, research zoologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and geologist Paul Hearty of the Bald Head Island Conservancy discovered sedimentary and fossil evidence in the walls of a limestone quarry in Bermuda that documents a rise in sea level during an interglacial period of the Middle Pleistocene in excess of 21 meters above its current level.

Hearty and colleagues had published preliminary evidence of such a sea-level rise nearly a decade ago, which was met with skepticism among geologists. This marine fossil evidence now provides unequivocal evidence of the timing and extent of this event.

“Forty feet below the surface of Lake Michigan in Grand Traverse Bay, a mysterious pattern of stones can be seen rising from an otherwise sandy half-mile of lake floor.

Likely the stones are a natural feature. But the possibility they are not has piqued the interest of archeologists, native tribes and state officials since underwater archeologist Mark Holley found the site in 2007 during a survey of the lake bottom.

The site recently has become something of an Internet sensation, thanks to a blogger who noticed an archeological paper on the topic and described the stones as ‘underwater Stonehenge’.

At the time of her sinking in 1744, the Victory was the most powerful warship in the world and was the immediate predecessor of Nelson’s flagship now berthed at Portsmouth.

Though the stones could signal an ancient shoreline or a glacial formation, their striking geometric alignment raises the possibility of human involvement. The submerged site was tundra when humans of the hunter-gatherer era roamed it 6,000 to 9,000 years ago.

“With its thruster motors fighting the current, the submersible pushed through a blizzard of sediment. Far above, in a darkened control room, the robot’s operator squeezed his eyes shut to push away the fatigue.

Making three dives a day, he had lost count of how many times he had approached suspected wrecks only to find a clump of ferrous rocks or junk from a ship. This time it would be different.

The announcement this week that Odyssey Marine Exploration, the world’s biggest commercial shipwreck exploration specialist, has discovered what appear to be the remains of HMS Victory has caused a sensation.

At the time of her sinking in 1744, the Victory was the most powerful warship in the world and was the immediate predecessor of Nelson’s flagship now berthed at Portsmouth.

The 240ft Odyssey Alert had towed high-frequency sonar and sophisticated metal detectors across the search area, identifying anything that did not appear to be natural. Odyssey Marine had surveyed about 4,700 sq miles (12,170 sq km) of ocean floor in the Western Approaches of the English Channel alone. Then the 251ft Odyssey Explorer arrived with the robot Zeus to take a closer look with cameras.

About 270 wrecks had been found so far, but on paper this latest target did not appear to be important. Then, into the glare of Zeus’s halogen lamps, loomed a huge bronze cannon.

“The ancient flood that some scientists think gave rise to the Noah story may not have been quite so biblical in proportion, a new study says.

Researchers generally agree that, during a warming period about 9,400 years ago, an onrush of seawater from the Mediterranean spurred a connection with the Black Sea, then a largely freshwater lake. That flood turned the lake into a rapidly rising sea. (See a map of the region)

A previous theory said the Black Sea rose up to 195 feet (60 meters), possibly burying villages and spawning the tale of Noah’s flood and other inundation folklore.

But the new study—largely focused on relatively undisturbed underwater fossils—suggests a rise of no more than 30 feet (10 meters).

Marine geologist Liviu Giosan and colleagues carbon-dated the shells of pristine mollusk fossils, which the researchers say bear no evidence of epic flooding.

“The underwater archaeology company Odyssey Marine Exploration recently found the British warship HMS Victory on the floor of the English Channel.

Spiegel Online spoke with company founder Gregg Stemm about gold coins, recalcitrant governments and secrecy.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You have said that your find of the HMS Victory is the most significant shipwreck find to date. How long had you been looking for it?

GREG STEMM: We have been working on the Atlas mapping project in the English Channel for four years now. We are searching an area of about 5,000 square miles (12,950 square kilometers), and in the course we have turned up a total of 273 shipwrecks, including some previously unidentified U-Boats — and the HMS Victory.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You stumbled across the HMS Victory by chance?

“The ship which inspired Nelson’s Victory, HMS Victory lost in 1744, has been found, solving one of the greatest mysteries in naval history.

The direct predecessor and inspiration behind Nelson’s flagship, Balchin’s Victory was the mightiest and technically most advanced vessel of her age. She sank during a storm in 1744 with all hands and was the last Royal Navy warship to be lost at sea with a complete complement of bronze cannon.

Two of the greatest admirals in English history, Sir John Norris and Sir John Balchin, called her their flagship. Research indicates that Balchin’s Victory sank with a substantial amount of gold and silver specie aboard.

‘Finding this shipwreck has solved one of the greatest shipwreck mysteries in history. Having discovered it in deep water far from where history says it was lost has served to exonerate Admiral Balchin and his officers from the accusation of having let the ship run aground on the Casquets due to faulty navigation’, commented Greg Stemm, Odyssey’s Chief Executive Officer.

“U.S. salvagers announced Monday that they have located the wreckage of the HMS Victory, one of the most important ships in British naval history, which sank in 1744 carrying four tons of gold coins.

Generations of researchers have puzzled over the loss of the Victory, a predecessor of the HMS Victory that was the flagship of Adm. Horatio Nelson, hero of the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar.

The ship, the most modern in the British fleet at the time, was lost with a crew of more than 1,000, more than 100 brass cannons and 100,000 gold coins it was transporting from Portugal.

“Rising sea levels since the last ice age have significantly increased the oceans’ capacity to absorb CO2, according to new research.

Global sea levels have risen some 130 metres since the height of the last ice age as glaciers and icecaps have melted. This flooded vast areas of land, equivalent to around twice the area of the USA, and increased the area of shallow ‘continental shelf’ sea by around 400 per cent.

The shallow bodies of water formed as the waters rose, such as the North Sea, can support large algal blooms each summer particularly in regions subject to thermal stratification – this is when the water column becomes separated into distinct layers of warm and cold water.

Researchers at the universities of Bangor and Kyushu have calculated that the increase in stratified conditions has greatly increased the total amount of carbon absorbed by the oceans.

“For centuries they have lain forgotten and untouched in the murky depths of the Mediterranean. But the sunken glories of Greece are now threatened by modern treasure hunters, who are targeting their riches since the lifting of a ban on coastal scuba-diving.

At risk, say archaeologists, is an unseen part of the country’s cultural patrimony, comprising thousands of shipwrecks dating from Classical, Hellenic, Roman, Byzantine and early modern times and their priceless cargoes of coins, ingots, weapons and gold.

‘Greek waters are some of the richest in antiquities in the world’, said the marine archaeologist Katerina Dellaporta. ‘Thanks to very stringent controls over underwater exploration shipwrecks have been extremely well preserved.’

Until recently divers were allowed access to just 620 miles of the country’s 12,000 mile coastline, but in an attempt to boost tourism, the conservative government opened the country’s entire coastal waters to underwater exploration in 2003.

“Once Europe’s most forbidding coast, this sparkling stretch of the Ionian Sea is slowly revealing lost treasures that date back 2,500 years and shipwrecks from ancient times.

Over the past two summers, a research ship carrying U. S. and Albanian experts has combed the waters off southern Albania, using scanning equipment and submersible robots to seek ancient wrecks.

In what organizers say is the first archeological survey of Albania’s seabed, at least five sites were located, which could fill in blanks on ancient shipbuilding techniques.

‘Albania is a tremendous untapped (archeological) resource’, said U. S. archeologist Jeffrey G. Royal from the Key West, Fla.-based RPM Nautical Foundation, a non-profit group leading the underwater survey. ‘With what we’ve discovered until now we may say that Albania is on a par with Italy and Greece.’

“Nearly a thousand new archeological sites have been discovered off the North East coast as part of an English Heritage-funded project.

During the survey, conducted by EH archaeologists along with help from Northumberland Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, ship wrecks, wartime defences and medieval remains have been uncovered.

The survey has been done to help researchers understand the history of the coastline and damages it may face.

Among the results were four ship wrecks found in mud flats off the coast of Amble. Their existence had previously been recorded, but until the survey took place their exact location was not known.

“Shipwrecks! Treasure! Gold, gold, gold! The hallmarks of treasure-hunting are the stuff of adventure stories, more than fun enough to make archaeologists, who are mounting increasing complaints against the pillaging of sunken ships, seem like wet blankets.

But more is at stake than just a few loose doubloons, they say. ‘The big picture is that a fair amount of humanity’s past we don’t know, and it’s important we don’t let it become lost forever’, says maritime archaeologist James Delgado, head of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology.

The latest flashpoint comes with the recent premiere of the show Treasure Quest on cable’s Discovery Channel (Thurs. 10 pm ET/PT), which follows deepwater exploration company Odyssey Marine Exploration as its teams explore two historic shipwrecks.

Odyssey is in hot water with Spain over one of them, fighting it out in U.S. federal court over rights to the wreck code-named the ‘Black Swan’. Odyssey announced the discovery of the wooden sailing ship in 2007.

An editorial in Archaeology magazine, published by the American Institute of Archaeology, charges that ‘the Discovery Channel is cashing in on the business of systematically looting shipwrecks’ in teaming up with Odyssey.

“Did a catastrophic flood of biblical proportions drown the shores of the Black Sea 9,500 years ago, wiping out early Neolithic settlements around its perimeter?

A geologist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and two Romanian colleagues report in the January issue of Quaternary Science Reviews that, if the flood occurred at all, it was much smaller than previously proposed by other researchers.

Using sediment cores from the delta of the Danube River, which empties into the Black Sea, the researchers determined sea level was approximately 30 meters below present levels—rather than the 80 meters others hypothesized.

‘We don’t see evidence for a catastrophic flood as others have described’, said Liviu Giosan, a geologist in the WHOI Geology and Geophysics Dept.

Ten thousand years ago, at the end of the last glacial period, the Black Sea was a lake—cut off from the Sea of Marmara and beyond it the Mediterranean by the Bosphorus sill.

Debate in geological and archaeological circles has focused on whether, as glaciers melted and global sea levels began to rise, the Bosphorus sill overflowed gradually or whether a flood broke through the sill, drowning some 70,000 square kilometers and wiping out early Neolithic civilizations in the region.

“Cuba has 2,820 shipwrecks registered, as well as 120 archaeological sites and a collection of some 5,000 objects taken from those sites.

The website of the Juventud Técnica magazine comments that due to its geographical location, for four centuries Cuba was a common destination for fleets traveling to and from the Americas.

Thousands of vessels traveled passed the Cuban archipelago and many of them sank due to tropical storms or accidents caused by lack of knowledge of the New World’s geography.

“A team of experts on Sunday began a second round of work to salvage articles from the Ertugrul Firkateyni, a Turkish military ship that sank in a severe storm off the coast of Kushimoto, Wakayama Prefecture, in 1890.

After studying the seafloor in 2007, the team, consisting of 12 people including a Turkish archaeologist, a Spanish oceanic architecture expert and local divers, has been salvaging the wreckage since last year under a three-year plan.

“Frame-based shipbuilding emerged surprisingly early and became more advanced within a few hundred years.

Surprising insights about ancient shipbuilding have floated to the surface from the submerged remnants of two major harbors, one on Israel’s coast and the other bordering Istanbul, Turkey. Researchers described their finds January 9 at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America.

Analyses of salvaged crafts indicate that shipbuilders started making sophisticated frames for their vessels by about 1,500 years ago, 500 years earlier than had been suspected, reported Yaakov Kahanov of the University of Haifa in Israel.

By a few hundred years later, craft constructors had steadily improved hull designs for a diverse collection of ships, says Cemal Pulak of Texas A&M University in College Station.

Frames provided greater structural stability for ships than an earlier hull-building technique that had relied on joining planks with adhesives and fasteners to form a shell. Such vessels date to as early as approximately 2,000 years ago.

“After several weeks of intense digging, an archaeological team from the University of Oslo reported a find last month that could change the written history of Illyrians for a period of their existence.

An Illyrian trading post in the border area between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) throws light on an unknown aspect of the life of these ancient people of the Balkan Peninsula.

The head of the archaeological team who discovered the traces of the trading post was Associate Professor Marina Prusac.

‘Our discovery is important for understanding cultural identities in the Balkans in ancient times’, she said.

“Adventurer, explorer, and maritime archaeologist Jim Delgado sits down for a chat with ARCHAEOLOGY’s contributing editor, Heather Pringle, in a quiet bar in the old cannery town of Steveston, British Columbia.

Delgado, the president of the world-famous Institute of Nautical Archaeology in Texas, entertains with tales of his underwater explorations of Khubilai Khan’s lost invasion fleet off the coast of Japan, and his discoveries of the lost gold rush port of San Francisco.

A passionate and eloquent advocate of underwater archaeology, Delgado reminds us why we should care about the wrecks that lie along the seabed and what we gain by protecting them from treasure hunters.

“Potentially pre-historic stone formation discovered deep underwater. Stones in a circular formation along with possible ancient carvings have been discovered deep below the surface of Lake Michigan.

The iconic Stonehenge in the UK is one of the most famous prehistoric monuments in the world, but it is not the only stone formation of its kind. Similar stone alignments have been found throughout England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales… and now, it seems, in Lake Michigan.

According to BLDGBLOG, in 2007, Mark Holley, professor of underwater archeology at Northwestern Michigan College, discovered a series of stones arranged in a circle 40 feet below the surface of Lake Michigan.

One stone outside the circle seems to have carvings that resemble a mastodon—an elephant-like animal that went extinct about 10,000 years ago.

“A wreck found on the Great Barrier Reef off Cairns in far north Queensland is almost certainly that of the historic vessel HM Colonial Schooner Mermaid, wrecked on June 13, 1829.

Archaeologists from the Australian National Maritime Museum were scanning Flora Reef, 13km east of the Frankland Islands off Cairns, when they found an anchor and other metal fittings.

They believe the discovery marks the final resting place of HMSC Mermaid, a government vessel that ran aground and broke up on a voyage from Sydney to northern Australia.

The 21-metre wooden vessel, built in India, was well known in Australian waters in the late 1820s, having circumnavigated the continent on a voyage of exploration under the command of Lieutenant Philip Parker King RN.

“Australian National Maritime Museum archaeologists have almost certainly found the site of an intriguing 1829 shipwreck on the Great Barrier Reef some 20 km off the coast of North Queensland.

Scanning Flora Reef, 13 km east of the Frankland Islands off Cairns, they have found an anchor and other metal fittings which they consider probably mark the final resting place of HM Schooner Mermaid, a government vessel that ran aground and broke up on a voyage from Sydney to Port Raffles (in what is now the Northern Territory).

They hope to find further evidence in the next few days to confirm the vessel’s identity.

‘This is an historically significant shipwreck, and there have been several attempts to locate where it happened – all of them unsuccessful so far’, the leader of the museum team, maritime archaeologist and curator Kieran Hosty, said today.