Return to the Antikythera Shipwreck: Marine Archaeology Goes High-Tech

9-29-2014 | Philip J. Hilts, Science Journalist

Antikythera, Greece — The yellow, torpedo-shaped vehicles glided through the clear Mediterranean water just 10 feet above the 2,000-year-old shipwreck on the bottom. During the weekend of September 20 the autonomous underwater vehicles made 40 long passes over the area that is home to the most famous of all ancient wrecks, the Antikythera “treasure ship,” taking its picture in detail for the first time.

Researchers are now processing the data from about 50,000 photos to create a three-dimensional photo map of the site. Even though the wreck has been visited before, this is the first mapping of it and one of only a handful of 3D maps of ancient underwater sites ever developed.

The large, loaded vessel was caught in a storm some time around 70 B.C. and it crashed into a sheer rock wall along the island of Antikythera and sank. The ship carried a huge array of precious objects—the richest cache ever found in the Mediterranean—from life-sized bronze and marble statues to gem-encrusted gold jewelry, coins and the only example of an ancient analog computer, now called the “Antikythera mechanism.” (Scientific American published a feature about the computer in 2009.)

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