The entrance lobby of the Institute of Nautical
Archaeology in Bodrum is guarded by a space-man from another era, an old brass-helmet, hookah-fed canvas dive suit. If the Marquis de Sade had ever taken an interest in subaquatic engineering he might have come up with something like this: a lead-weighted death trap for plunging a sponge diver up to 70 meters under the sea, and then hauling him up again, after only minutes of decompression (if any) so that the next diver could take his place, an endless cycle that left countless men tortured and crippled. The sponge divers of old believed in only a few precautions against the bends, including smoking a cigarette immediately after each dive, and fasting until the evening meal. Small wonder that every season the sponge boats left Bodrum was like a scene of departure for war. The sponging industry was a deadly harvest from which many divers did not return.
Our new Byzantine wreck is a rock garden of beautiful sponges, and today’s photos call to mind one reason why we’re here in the first place. From the earliest days of underwater archaeology in Turkey, when Peter Throckmorton and Honor Frost befriended Captain Kemal Aras and went with him to dive on ancient shipwrecks, there has been a very special relationship between sponge divers and archaeologists. The vast majority of the 150-odd underwater sites currently registered in the SOA database were first brought to the attention of INA survey teams by local sponge divers. It was sponge boat captain Kemal Aras who led Peter Throckmorton to the Cape Gelidonya Bronze Age shipwreck back in the early 1960s, the excavation of which brought George Bass to Turkey and started the science of underwater archaeology. The famous shipwrecks of Uluburun, Yassi Ada, and Serçe Liman were all discovered by sponge divers. Our debt to them cannot be overstated.But sponge divers and archaeologists are not the only people who come across shipwrecks deep under the sea. At the time of the Roman Empire, men called “urinatores” specialised in salvage diving with the aid of inflated bladders, and their work has been detected on Mediterranean shipwrecks as deep as 30 meters. Centuries later, fishermen and spongers would often raise the odd amphora. Unfortunately, as the technology of diving has improved
over the decades, so to has the vulnerability of shipwrecks to systematic looting. For example, in 1973, 17 of the 18 Anatolian shipwrecks discovered by the annual Institute of Nautical Archaeology survey showed signs of previous looting, and certain wrecks reported to have several hundred intact amphoras have been stripped bare by the time archaeologists reached them. With a site as scattered and sparse as our new Byzantine shipwreck, we have to wonder whether the best pickings have already been taken (and we don’t mean by octopuses). One of the goals of SOA fieldwork is to monitor the conservation of known shipwreck sites to make sure this sort of destruction doesn’t continue.Our best allies in protecting Anatolia’s underwater archaeological heritage are the people who live and work by the sea. Today we were visited by several families from a nearby village who came to see our camp and learn a bit about the work we’re doing. They will probably never have the opportunity to explore the Cakil Burnu shipwrecks, which lie in an area where scuba diving is forbidden. But having people visit our camp (or our web page) gives us an opportunity to share some of the excitement of working on these sites, and hopefully raise awareness of their importance.
We conclude with some advice about sponges from Pliny the Elder (NH XXXI 47.123-131), who is serving as camp physician now that our doctor has departed. Sponges are very good for protecting one’s head from the sun. Hung over a sick man they will give him more restful nights, and in the treatment of wounds they may even be used as a substitute for greasy wool. Good thing we’ve got plenty of sponges, because right now we’re all out of greasy wool.
