A five-year underwater excavation of the world-famous Antikythera shipwreck has concluded with a major breakthrough: the recovery of large, fragile wooden sections of the ancient ship’s hull, offering unprecedented new insights into how such vessels were built, the Greek Ministry of Culture announced Tuesday.
The international research team also discovered fragments of a marble statue and other artifacts during the final expedition at the site, which lies off the remote Greek island of Antikythera. The finds coincide with the 125th anniversary of the wreck’s original discovery by sponge divers in 1900.
The recovery of the wooden hull pieces is considered the most significant achievement of the program. Preliminary analysis suggests the ship was constructed using a “shell-first” technique, a common method in the Mediterranean between the 4th and 1st centuries B.C. Timber analysis has dated the wood to around 235 B.C.
For more than a century, the Antikythera wreck has yielded a trove of treasures, including bronze and marble statues, jewelry, and its most famous discovery, the Antikythera Mechanism—an astonishingly complex astronomical calculator now considered the world’s first analog computer. However, the ship itself has remained largely a mystery. These newly recovered hull sections will allow archaeologists to study its construction in detail for the first time.
The research was led by the Swiss School of Archaeology in Greece under the supervision of the Greek Ministry of Culture’s Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities. Dr. Angeliki G. Simosi, head of the ephorate, and Professor Lorenz E. Baumer of the University of Geneva directed the fieldwork.
Using advanced diving and remote-operated vehicle technology, the team also located additional pieces of a life-sized marble statue of a man and a wider variety of ceramic amphorae from the island of Chios than previously recorded, shedding more light on the ship’s rich cargo and the daily life of its crew.