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Report on Cape Gelidonya 2010
The Permit
I returned to Cape Gelidonya, Turkey, for the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) in July,
August, and September, 2010, to re-examine the site of the Late Bronze Age shipwreck I had
excavated there exactly fifty years earlier and to help prepare for its new publication. Because the
Turkish government is now issuing no new excavation permits for less than three four-month
campaigns, helpful members of the Turkish Ministry of Culture worked out a complex
arrangement whereby the Antalya Museum was issued a single-campaign salvage permit, of the
type given when ancient remains are discovered in an area where a road or building is about to be
constructed and a salvage excavation is needed. Because the artifacts from the original 1960
excavation were placed in what has become the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology,
however, that museum was to receive whatever we found in 2010 so that all finds from the wreck
would be together in one facility. Archaeologists from both museums were assigned to the
excavation, those rotating from the Antalya Museum to serve also as representatives of the
Ministry of Culture. Neither museum, however, had a suitable diving archaeological director, and
thus another organization became involved when Dr. Harun Özdaş, of the faculty at Dokuz Eylül
University (DEU) in Izmir, was assigned as director. This was auspicious for I had brought Dr.
Özdaş to the Nautical Archaeology Program at Texas A&M University (TAMU) for a year when
he was a Bodrum Museum curator writing his dissertation, and he had worked on INA
excavations in the past. Thus, he was amenable to sharing fieldwork duties with INA’s Dr.
Nicolle Hirschfeld, a Bronze Age specialist on the faculty of Trinity University in San Antonio,
who had been to Cape Gelidonya earlier, and had worked with Dr. Özdaş when they were both on
the staff of the INA excavations at Uluburun. Finally, joining us was Dr. Cemal Pulak, field
director of eight of the eleven campaigns of the excavation of the Bronze Age shipwreck, at
Uluburun, Turkey, and now its overall director. The excavation team consisted of veterans of INA
projects, students from both TAMU and DEU, a Polish professor from Nicolaus Copernicus
University and a Polish student from Krakow University, and various specialists such as a
photographer, videographer, rotating physicians, mechanic, and crews for the vessels. These
diverse staffers worked smoothly together, with Dr. Hirschfeld making their daily assignments in
consultation with Dr. Özdaş. I offered guidance gained from half a century of experience.
Background and Purpose of the Excavation
The purpose of the project was based on brief visits to the site from the nearby excavation at
Uluburun, always accompanied by the Turkish commissioner for that excavation. In 1987 a few
of us sailed to Cape Gelidonya for a day, simply for nostalgia, aboard INA’s 20-meter divingsupport vessel Virazon, with its multi-person recompression chamber, and all necessary
compressors for filling scuba tanks and powering airlifts. Each of us dived but once, but Claude
Duthuit, of the original excavation team, and I quickly found in the sand a few pan-balance
weights we had overlooked nearly thirty years before. In addition, we found a small bull’s-head
protome, and a solder-like alloy of lead and tin identified by Dr. Robert Brill of the Corning
Museum of Glass. Pulak and three companions then found several well-preserved double-edged
bronze knives, and a third dive located additional fragments of copper and bronze. These
unexpected discoveries led to return visits in 1988, 1989, 1990, and 1994.
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During a two-week visit in 1988, the use of battery-powered underwater scooters allowed
divers to explore much farther from the main site than was practical in 1960. Almost seventy
meters away they found the two virtually intact Mycenaean IIIB stirrup jars, which provided the
closest date for the wreck so far (end of the 13th century B.C.). Later, swimming from one of the
stirrup jars back toward the original excavation site, Pulak and TufanTuranlı found a bronze spit
on the sand only two or three meters from where the first jar was discovered. It was too dense to
have been carried there by the current, but all three finds lay near the base of a pinnacle of rock
that rises up from the seabed to a depth of only a meter and a half. Further exploration, often with
a far better metal detector than was available to us in 1960, exposed a trail of fragmentary bronze
and copper objects from the base of the pinnacle to the main site, indicating that the rocky
pinnacle probably tore a hole in the hull of the Bronze Age ship, allowing it to strew objects along
the seabed as it drifted down to its final destination. At that destination, Pulak then answered a
question that had always plagued us. Had the large boulder that delineated one end of the site
fallen there before or after the wrecking? He found in seaweed on top of the boulder a bronze
sword and ballast stones, indicating that the ship had landed on the boulder, which held up one
end (stern) of the hull before that disintegrated and tumbled into the gully formed between the
boulder and the base of the island (Devecitaşı Adası) against which we had always and wrongly
assumed it was dashed.
A third visit, in 1989, lasted twelve days. More metal artifacts were found along the path
between the pinnacle and the boulder, but, surprisingly, our new metal detector located pottery as
well as copper and bronze. It detected part of a large pithos (storage jar) of Cypriot type, invisible
under thick seabed concretion that defied all attempts to chisel it free.
Attempts to free the pithos during a ten-day trip the following year again proved futile.
I was not present for the next and last visit to the site, for five days in 1994, but Pulak led
a team that successfully searched for the ship’s anchor(s) with the underwater scooters. About a
hundred meter from the main site, in the same basic direction as the stirrup jars’ find spot, it
located a sandstone anchor of a type not common to the Aegean, but frequently found along the
Syro-Palestinian coast and on and around Cyprus. Had it been found in 1960 it would have
strengthened my then controversial belief that the Cape Gelidonya ship was of Near Eastern rather
than Aegean origin. Attempts to chisel the large pithos free from the thick concretion that
surrounded it in the gully continued to frustrate the divers. The large jar’s position in the gully,
however, extended the length of the site to closer to the length of the Uluburun ship, perhaps 16
meters, than to our original estimate of 10 meters.
These new discoveries at the site, along with results of laboratory analyses of metals,
stone, and ceramics, demanded a new and revised publication, which demanded a new full-scale
excavation, with equipment not available to us in1960, so that the publication of the site can be as
complete and thorough as possible.
The 2010 Campaign
I sent several advance parties to scout for a suitable camp site, one of them led by Robin Piercy,
now retired from INA, who had overseen constructions of our camps at Şeytan Deresi, Serçe
Limanı, Uluburun, and Tektaş Burnu. All reported back that camping on Devecitaşı Adası would
be most difficult because of the steep, jagged terrain. Partly because it took a long time to
negotiate the permit, and partly because we rightly can no longer simply pour tons of concrete for
camp-structure bases along the increasingly frequented Turkish coast, we therefore chartered for
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$23,635 the STS Bodrum a 36-meter sail-training ship, for a floating dormitory and kitchen; it
slept sixteen of the team; Virazon usually slept eight; the captain of INA’s 15-meter catamaran
Millawanda slept in its single cabin; and all of us ate aboard the STS Bodrum. Millawanda had
been overhauled and readied for support of our two-person submersible Carolyn, intended to
search farther afield for more ship’s anchors; divers can search for only twenty minutes per dive,
whereas occupants of Carolyn can comfortably search for four hours per dive. Once on site, the
catamaran, because of its large deck space and low freeboard, also served as the diving platform.
In early July the fleet sailed from Bodrum to the Cape, where diving commenced on July 4, and
remained until August 26. As usual on INA projects, teams of divers dived twice daily, six days a
week, for twenty minutes a dive, using decompression tables designed specifically for INA by Dr.
Richard Vann of Duke University. As usual, also, our “underwater telephone booth,” an air-filled
plastic dome chained to heavy steel plates on the seabed, and three airlifts were installed on the
site. The only unexpected problem for the diving was the loss of days due to high wind and
waves, when all three vessels had to seek shelter in neighboring bays; this was surprising because
weather had not canceled a single day’s operations in 1960, when we dived from much smaller
vessels, 10-meter sponging boats.
I spent the month of September working with photographer Susannah Snowden in the
Bodrum Museum to photograph or re-photograph all of the finds made in 1960 for the proposed
new publication, which deserves better pictures than I took with a hand-held camera back then.
Problems with the Use of Carolyn
A year earlier Carolyn had been shipped from Turkey back to its manufacturer in California for
maintenance. It was temporarily re-imported into Turkey for a two-year period by Dokuz Eylül
University; to import it again for ten years would cost an estimated $60,000 in duty. Because the
submersible’s arrival back in Turkey was delayed, partly because of changing freighter schedules
caused by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Harun Özdaş remained with Virazon and
Millawanda in the nearby port city of Finike for some time after August 26, hoping in vain that he
might still be able to use it on site for the anchor search. Even after Carolyn reached Izmir, he was
prepared to truck the submersible to Finike as late as the onset of winter storms in November,
when it became too dangerous to take our vessels into the open sea again.
Because our failure to use Carolyn on site was our only failure, it deserves detailed
explanation. We had obtained a grant of $39,000 specifically for Carolyn’s use from the Institute
for Aegean Prehistory (INSTAP), which had provided funds for INA’s purchase of the sub a
decade earlier, and a grant from the National Geographic Society, $5,000 of which was to pay the
travel and salary of a submersible pilot. We spent $26,377 in good faith ($8,957 for transport of
the sub, $9,580 for maintenance and repairs to Millawanda, $3,340 salary for its captain, plus
approximately $4,500 for fuel), fully expecting to use the submersible. The problem arose when
the Izmir Harbor Master refused to let the submersible be used without seeing its classification by
the American Bureau of Ships (ABS). ABS is not an American government agency like the FAA
(Federal Aviation Administration), but one of several private classification societies that
established themselves “to promote the security of life, property and the natural environment,
primarily through the development and verification of standards for the design, construction and
operational maintenance of marine-related facilities.”
The acrylic pressure hull of Carolyn was designed to ABS rules, which provide a safe life
of ten years or 10,000 dives. She had fallen out of Class after her first year because for her to
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remain in Class, ABS must perform annual inspections which cost $10,000-$15,000 a year. Every
country does not demand certification by ABS. Even in the United States, non-commercial
submersibles are not required to hold such certification. The Coast Guard in Turkey was happy
with a more informal arrangement when we used Carolyn between 2000 and 2009. Further,
because she had made only a fraction of 10,000 dives, and had been protected from the sun’s
ultra-violet rays year round, and because the submersible was coming directly back from
SEAmagine, which designed and built her, and deemed her to be still in good condition, we did
not anticipate this demand for new ABS certification. We continue to work very hard to free the
submersible for use, even for next summer: Dr. Özdaş has made multiple trips from Izmir to
Ankara to meet with the proper authorities, including the Undersecretary for Maritime Affairs,
General Director of Maritime Transportation.
It is clear that the submersible must carry a formal ABS class certificate. To be re-instated
in Class, ABS must review documents and perform a full inspection of the submersible.
According the present rules, the two acrylic domes need to be replaced. There are options
available to extend the life of one of the domes but will require the other dome to be destructively
tested. The material test will confirm the health status of the acrylic and extend the life of the
remaining window for 10 years. Unfortunately, the test window will need to be replaced. There is
also the unlikely but possible scenario where both windows need to be replaced, which would
increase the cost.
This replacement would cost at least $40,000. SEAmagine can do this work in Turkey but
several large items would have to be shipped to Bodrum. The ABS inspection would most likely
be performed by an inspector from a European office. SEAmagine, which clearly does not want to
see any of its subs operate under unsafe conditions, is also talking to another agency,
Germanischer Lloyds (GL), which has stated a clear interest in re-classifying Carolyn to their
standards and which may be able to provide a competitive alternative cost. None of what I have
described suggests antagonism toward INA. Carolyn represents a new submersible design and no
one in Turkey knows how to deal with her, inspect her, or take responsibility for her use. Because
we have always been pioneers in the use of human-occupied research submersibles, we are facing
problems that have no clear answers. An increasing number of private yachts carry small
submersibles simply for the enjoyment of their passengers, and there is no international
agreement on the use of these submersibles. Some harbor masters may ask for certification and
other harbor masters do not. The cost of maintaining classification is always a budget question but
it is the best way to ensure that a vehicle is recognized as safe by any harbor master wherever she
is deployed and most importantly, as a high value asset, adds significantly to the submersible’s
value retention over time.
We continue to work diligently on this problem, for during her first decade in Turkey
Carolyn proved to be a most useful and reliable vehicle. None of us who have used her would
hesitate for a second before cruising around the wreck at Cape Gelidonya for a few days to look
for more anchors.
Results
In 2010, we raised 350 “lots,” plastic bags of artifacts, as well as larger items, from the site.
Ceramics discovered under the thick crust of seabed concretion included two large, complete onehandled jugs, a handle bearing a Cypro-Minoan mark, possible Cypriot fine-wares (White Shaved
and/or Bucchero), and the large pithos fragment (finally chiseled free and raised – on the last day
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of diving), which may join fragments retrieved in 1960; these not only greatly increased the
number of ceramic finds from the wreck, but also greatly expanded the length of the site and gave
a clearer picture of the ship’s stern contents, which have always seemed to represent living
quarters. About a third of the objects raised are of copper or bronze: cleaned and identified so far
are fifteen broken bronze tools and blades, a rim and handle from a small caldron, parts of fourhandled and bun ingots, a pin, and several pieces of vessel-sheeting. Twenty-three lots are
identified as tin concretions. In addition we found at least five more pan-balance weights. Dr.
Hirschfeld will return to Bodrum this year to examine and catalog the results of laboratory
cleaning of metal concretions and the joining of ceramic sherds for the forthcoming new
publication. Unlike in 1960, when almost all conservation was conducted in the field, we did
minimal conservation on site, preferring to have it done by the staff of INA’s conservation
laboratory in Bodrum. Thus we will not know exactly what we found until next summer.
After the diving was over, Dr. Pulak made a substantial discovery in the storerooms of the
Bodrum Museum: seven large wooden crates of never conserved, cleaned or cataloged metal
fragments, stored and forgotten for the half century since 1960 when our methods of conservation
of underwater finds were crude or non-existent. The contents of these boxes have now been given
to the staff of our conservation laboratory in Bodrum, where they will be treated, identified,
cataloged, and illustrated along with finds made in 2010.
50th Anniversary Celebration
During the course of the summer, Claude Duthuit came from France, Waldemar Illing from
Germany, and Ann Bass and I from the United States, the only survivors of the original
excavation team, to celebrate the half-century anniversary of that event. Duthuit, Illing, and I
dived together again to the site, and then the four of us returned to the narrow strip of beach,
surrounded by cliffs, which make it accessible only by sea, where we had camped for three
months in1960. We marveled at how we had endured it. In oven-like heat, without refrigeration,
we never had even a cool drink in camp. So it was a nice change when INA Director Danielle
Feeney, who is French, showed up this time in her ocean-going yacht, on which she circles the
globe, and not only ferried us about, between the wreck and the beach, but invited most of the
current excavators to join us on board for lunch, with real French champagne and caviar! It was
lucky we had our celebration when we did, for only a few months later I had a stroke, and Claude
passed away in New York.
Future Plans
As stated earlier, there have been so many new discoveries about the Cape Gelidonya shipwreck
since it was published in 1967 as a volume in the Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society (Cape Gelidonya: A Bronze Age Shipwreck) that it will be fully published anew in INA’s
Ed Rachal Foundation Nautical Archaeology Series put out by Texas A&M University Press.
Tentatively titled Cape Gelidonya: A Cypriot Bronze Age Shipwreck, to distinguish it from the
original report, it will be authored by Pulak, Özdaş, Hirschfeld, Bass, and perhaps others, all
under the direction of Hirschfeld. This will include a completely illustrated catalog of all finds
made over the years (including many of the 1960 finds which were not illustrated in the 1967
publication of the site), the results of laboratory analyses that pinpoint the geographical locations
of the sources of many of the metals (by Noel Gale and Z. A. Stos-Gale of Oxford University),
stones and pottery (by Yuval Goren) – so far all shown to be from Cyprus; a reinterpretation of
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the pan-balance weights (by Pulak), and new interpretations, based on further research of finds
published in 1967. Some of these new interpretations and discoveries have been published in
various places since 1967, but will be integrated into the new book:
Bass, G. F.
1973 Cape Gelidonya and Bronze Age Maritime Trade. Orient and Occident, Festschrift Cyrus
Gordon. Harry A. Hoffner, ed. (Kevelaer): 29 38.
1988 Return to Cape Gelidonya. INA Newsletter 15.2 (June 1988): 2-5.
1989 Cape Gelidonya – Once More. INA Newsletter 16.4 (Winter 1989): 12-13.
1991 Evidence of Trade from Bronze Age Shipwrecks. Bronze Age Trade in the Mediterranean.
N.H. Gale, ed. (Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 90, Jonsered): 69-82.
1997
Prolegomena to a Study of Maritime Traffic in Raw Materials to the Aegean During the
Fourteenth and Thirteenth Centuries B.C. TEXNH: Craftsmen, Craftswomen, and
Craftsmanship in the Aegean Bronze Age. Proceedings of the 6th International Aegean
Conference, Philadelphia, Temple University, 18-21 April 1996. Philip P. Betancourt and
Robert Laffineur, eds. Aegaeum 16 (Liège and Austin): 153-170.
1997
Beneath the Wine Dark Sea: Nautical Archaeology and the Phoenicians of the Odyssey.
Greeks and Barbarians: Essays on the Interactions between Greeks and Non-Greeks in
Antiquity and the Consequences for Eurocentrism. John Coleman & Clark Walz, eds.
Occasional Publications of the Department of Near Eastern Studies and Jewish Studies,
Cornell University, No. 4: 71-101.
1998
Sailing Between the Aegean and the Orient in the Second Millennium BC. The Aegean
and the Orient in the Second Millennium: Proceedings of the 50th Anniversary
Symposium, Cincinnati, 18-20 April 1997. E.H. Cline and D. Harris-Cline, eds. Aegaeum
18 (Liège and Austin): 183-191.
1999 The Hull and Anchor of the Cape Gelidonya Ship. Meletemata. P.P. Betancourt, V.
Karageorghis, R. Laffineur, and W.-D. Niemeier, eds. Aegaeum 20 (Liège and Austin):
21-24.
2010 A 50th Anniversary Reunion at Cape Gelidonya.” INA Quarterly 37.2&3 (Summer-Fall
2010): 16-17.
Gale, Noël H.
1991 Copper Oxhide Ingots: their Origin and their Place in the Bronze Age Metals Trade in the
Mediterranean. Bronze Age Trade in the Mediterranean. N. H. Gale, ed. Studies in
Mediterranean Archaeology 90, Jonsered: 197-239.
Geographica.
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1989 Nostalgic Dives Yield New Shipwreck Finds. National Geographic 176.1 (July 1989):
n.p.
Hirschfeld, Nicolle
2010 INA in Depth. INA Quarterly 37.2&3 (Summer-Fall 2010): 30.
Lee, Ryan Lee. “
2010 More Depth. INA Quarterly 37.2&3 (Summer-Fall 2010): 31.
Pulak., Cemal
1988 Excavations in Turkey: 1988 Campaign. INA Newsletter 15.4 (1988): 12-17.
1996 Analysis of the Weight Assemblages from the Late Bronze Age Shipwrecks at Uluburun
and Cape Gelidonya, Turkey. Unpubl. Diss. Texas A&M University. College Station, TX.
Pulak, Cemal and Edward Rogers
1994 The 1993-1994 Turkish Shipwreck Survey. INA Quarterly 21.4 (1994): 17-21.
Stos, Z. A.
2009 Across the Wine Dark Seas... Sailor Tinkers and Royal Cargoes in the Late Bronze Age
Eastern Mediterranean. From Mine to Microscope: Advances in the Study of Ancient
Technology. Andrew Shortland, Ian Freestone and Thilo Rehren, eds. (Oxford): 163-180.
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A comparison of the plan published in 1967, upper, with than made in 2010, lower, shows how
much the area of the site was expanded from the area of just the Boulder and Platform excavated
in 1960. The two plans are not oriented exactly the same, as the North arrows indicate.