Divers Found a Sealed Vessel in a 1,100-Year-Old Shipwreck. What's Inside Is Still a Mystery.
A team of divers discovered a 1,100-year-old sealed vessel with a mysterious substance inside.
Researchers used robots to retrieve the amphora from a shipwreck 45 to 50 meters beneath the surface.
The team believes the ship that carried the amphora sailed off the coast of Gaza, Palestine, to deliver gifts to pilgrims.
The Mediterranean Sea has long been a major facilitator of trade, but old stories of sailors on merchant ships were treacherous ones. Hard working conditions, cramped quarters, and unpredictable storms were all part of the job—and unfortunately, rough seas meant shipwrecks. Today, shipwrecks can tell scientists about more than just the vessels and those who sailed them—they also can shed light on the people who lived in port cities. Researchers will look for just that sort of information after a team recently discovered a sealed amphora (or storage jar) that's approximately 1,100 years old off the coast of Antalya, Turkey.
With the help of underwater robots, the 20-person dive team retrieved the amphora from a shipwreck 45 to 50 meters (147 to 164 feet) deep. The expedition is yet another part of Turkey's Culture and Tourism Ministry's ongoing Heritage for the Future project.
Once the amphora was in the lab, researchers first examined it with a microscope. The team then spent an hour carefully prying open the mouth of the vessel with chisels, hammers, and other small tools, careful to keep the jar damp to prevent the surface material from drying out.
'The fact that the amphora's mouth remained sealed for over a thousand years is a unique case,' Hakan Öniz—scientific director of the excavation—reportedly said. 'It could contain olive pits, olive oil, wine or fish sauce—but it could also be something entirely unexpected. It is truly an exciting process because this is a sealed amphora. After 1,100 years, it has been opened, and we will only know its contents after the analysis. Opening it was thrilling; waiting for the results is even more exciting.'
Researchers are using texture, composition, and even the scent of the material inside the amphora to identify it. According to Öniz, they believe the vessel likely carried wine. The team also believes the ship visited various ports in the 9th and 10th centuries, setting sail for its final journey from the coast of Gaza, Palestine.
At the time, Gaza's major export was olive oil, so the wine was likely from the city of Tekirdağ, Turkey. Because local Palestinians didn't drink wine, researchers theorize that the merchant ship was sailing to deliver the wine as a gift to migrants, Christian pilgrims, or those visiting Jerusalem. The ship likely sank after getting caught in a rough storm.
As for the future of the amphora, there's a lot more testing to come.
'We will try to understand what happened over the 1,100 years under the sea, subjected to both pressure and temperature fluctuations,' Asiltürk Ersoy—one of the scientists examining the amphora—reportedly said. 'Scientific research cannot rely on a single test; many different analyses must corroborate each other. Therefore, the process will be lengthy. We will combine the analysis results with historical knowledge from the period and present our findings to the worlds of science and archaeology.'
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