After a night disturbed by ominous lightening and thunder, the message from above was clear: it was time to visit the church wreck. So while Tufan and Gokhan Bey did some final shots of the Hellenistic wreck, the rest of the team set out to clean the new site for photography. The church wreck consists of a mixed cargo of carved marble and amphoras, and today two early Christian crosses were discovered on one of the large marble slabs. Was this cargo of beautifully fluted columns and
architectural pieces intended for the construction of a Christian church? If so, the date of 5th-7th century AD (based on the amphoras) would make it one of the earliest churches we know of. Perhaps, however, this marble was destined for another structure - the tomb of an important or wealthy person, or a grand public building. In ancient times, western Anatolia had many famous quarries and it would be interesting to have this marble analyzed to determine its origin. For now, however, our task is just to image and record what we see, and learn as much as possible without disturbing the site. All of us are excited to be diving on what must surely rank as one of the most unusual and important of all Anatolia's ancient shipwrecks.
The ship had come to rest in the usual place, straddling the interface of the sandy talus slope and a steep rocky wall. You can still see how the marble columns were stacked, and the cargo preserves the outline of the ship's hull quite well. More marble and amphoras peep invitingly from the sand, and as with the Hellenistic wreck one feels that the visible remains may be just the tip of the iceberg. But what a tip! As we cleaned away weed and old fishing lines from the site, a bizarre jumble of carved marble and Byzantine amphoras emerged. Fused to the rock in the center of the wreck was something that resembled a wok - perhaps the ship's cooking pot.
After the 'clean team' of Berta, Guzden, Bridget, and Orkan ascended from the afternoon dive, Tufan and
Gokhan Bey went down with the metal detector and picked up some massive readings over the lower sandy parts of the wreck, perhaps indicating an anchor (or bronze statue...?). Actually the possibility of finding metal 'treasure' on a Late Roman or Byzantine wreck is quite high, since merchant ships of that era have been found to be more likely to carry coin hordes. For example, 54 copper and 16 gold coins were recovered from the 7th century Yassi Ada wreck, allowing it to be precisely dated to AD 626. But today we left the church wreck with a different kind of treasure: a beautiful golden sponge discovered by Berta, and a horde of very special memories...