Found by a sponge diver
In 1982 a Turkish sponge diver, Mehmet Çakır, reported strange metal objects that looked like animal hides lying on the seabed off Uluburun, a headland near Kaş on the southern coast of Turkey. Archaeologists from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology investigated and identified them as copper ingots in the shape of oxhides, a form known from Bronze Age sites around the Mediterranean. The wreck was lying on a steep slope at depths of roughly 45 to 52 metres. Excavation took place over a number of summers between 1984 and 1994, directed first by George Bass and then largely by Cemal Pulak, and it involved thousands of dives.
The work was demanding. At that depth, a diver can only remain on the seabed for a short time on each dive, so progress was slow and every dive had to be planned. Even so, it became one of the most thoroughly excavated early shipwrecks.
When and where
The ship has been dated to the late fourteenth century BC, around 1300 BC, in the Late Bronze Age. Tree-ring evidence from pieces of wood used as packing on board supports a date at about the end of the fourteenth century. It was probably sailing westward along the southern coast of Anatolia when it sank, perhaps after leaving a port in the eastern Mediterranean. The exact route, owner and destination are still discussed.
The cargo
The size and variety of what the ship carried is the main reason the find is famous.
- Copper. About ten tonnes of copper, mostly in oxhide-shaped ingots, with roughly 350 ingots reported.
- Tin. Roughly a tonne, which was needed to make bronze when mixed with copper.
- Glass. Ingots of coloured glass, including deep blue, which were probably meant to be worked into objects.
- Ivory, ebony and other materials. These included hippopotamus and elephant ivory, and African blackwood.
- Jars and foodstuffs. Many Canaanite jars, some containing terebinth resin, and others with food such as figs, olives and grain.
- Luxury and personal items. Gold and silver jewellery, a gold scarab bearing the name of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti, weapons, tools and Mycenaean pottery.
Because the cargo includes materials from many regions, it gives a snapshot of long-distance trade in the Bronze Age. The tin trade routes of the period are not well understood, and a ship carrying such a large amount of tin is useful evidence for how the metals were moved. Other items point to Egypt, the Aegean, the Levant and possibly further afield, including amber beads that may have come from the Baltic region.
The hull
Only parts of the hull survived, partly embedded in the seabed, but they are important. The vessel was built with the planks joined edge to edge by mortise-and-tenon joints, held by pegs, a shell-first method that was used in the eastern Mediterranean for centuries. The planks were made of cedar. The ship was probably around fifteen metres long, though estimates vary since the hull is incomplete. It was a seagoing cargo carrier, not a warship, and the technical evidence adds to the picture of ancient shipbuilding methods.
Heavy stone anchors, of a kind used widely in the period, were also found, and more than twenty were recovered. Their number suggests that the ship carried spares or that they served some other purpose, though this is interpretation.
Who was on board?
Questions of identity are open. Several types of material suggest links to the Levantine coast, such as Canaanite jars and some of the personal items, and many researchers have concluded that the ship was probably from that area. Yet there are items of Mycenaean Greek style, including seals and weapons, which could mean that Greek travellers or traders were on board, or that they were simply trade goods. Scholars debate how to read this. The evidence does not reveal the crew’s number or names, though items such as seals show that officials or merchants were involved.
What it tells us about trade
The ship supports the view that the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean was a connected world. Rulers exchanged gifts, and merchants moved metals, textiles and luxury goods across wide distances. It is hard to say how much of the cargo belonged to a palace and how much to private traders, and both are possible. The find is often discussed with other evidence for Mediterranean seafaring, including the earlier excavation at Cape Gelidonya, and with texts and tomb paintings from Egypt, such as those relating to the Egyptian sea lanes.
The wreck is an exceptional find, though, and should not be generalised too far. It records a single ship on a single voyage. Its value lies in the amount of information preserved with it, and in the careful methods used to recover that information. Many of the finds are displayed at the Museum of Underwater Archaeology in Bodrum, Turkey.