Searching for Ancient Shipwrecks in the Aegean Sea: the Discovery of Chios and Kythnos Hellenistic Wrecks with the Use of Marine Geological-Geophysical Methods

Abstract

This paper presents the results of two deep-water archaeological surveys recently conducted in the Aegean Sea, and the advantages of using conventional marine geological techniques in deep-water archaeology. Two Hellenistic wrecks were discovered: one in the Chios-Oinousses strait at 70 m, was a concentration of over 400 amphoras in a 1.5-m-high, high-backscattering, morphological high; the second, west of Kythnos island, at 495 m, consisted of a few amphoras scattered in a 20 × 20-m-wide area. Side-scan sonar was integrated with high-resolution sub-bottom profiling, and the integration of the two data-sets proved to contribute significantly to realistic interpretation of the sonar targets.

Data‐fused digital bathymetry and side‐scan sonar as a base for archaeological inventory of submerged landscapes in the Rideau Canal, Ontario, Canada

“…Geophysical surveys, particularly sonar methods, have been used in underwater archaeological site investigation for decades, but most work has focused on locating and characterizing shipwreck sites Mindell, 2004;Watson, 2006;Sakellariou et al, 2007). A number of recent studies employed geophysical remote sensing as a tool for reconstructing submerged terrains and for predicting and understanding the spatial context of underwater archaeological sites (Quinn, Cooper, & Williams, 2000;Cooper et al, 2002;Momber, 2006).…”

Remote sensing techniques in the search for ancient shipwrecks: how to distinguish a wreck from a rock in geophysical recordings

“…It is widely accepted that remote-sensing techniques are a powerful tool in deep-water archaeological research (Ballard et al 2000, Quinn et al 2002a, Quinn et al 2002b, Chalari et al 2003, Blondel and Pouliquen 2004, Papatheodorou et al 2001, Sakellariou et al 2006, 2007, especially at depths beyond the range of scuba-diving. Quinn et al (2000) describe adequately the principles of the operation of side scan sonar, sub-bottom profiler and magnetometer and the advantages of using geophysical equipment to record submerged and buried archaeological resources.…”

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles as Tools for Deep-Submergence Archaeology

“…1(a)) are fairly obvious. Ancient wrecks, however, are more difficult to identify and classify as non-geological in nature when completing a large-area survey [30,31]. Field experience searching for early modern and ancient wrecks, which are typically less than 15 m in length with less than a metre of relief, has demonstrated the need for sonars at frequencies of 300 kHz and greater.…”