Deep-water shipwrecks in the East Mediterranean

Deep-water shipwrecks provide an opportunity to investigate ships away from the destructive dynamics of coastlines and approaches to harbors where most ancient wrecks to date have been found. Such exploration expands the potential for finding wrecks of periods for which relatively few are known. One such period is the 6th and 7th c. in the E Mediterranean. Studies of cargo assemblages from the few known wrecks of the later Roman period reveal a partial picture of interlinked and overlapping trade networks that incorporated major and minor ports in the adjacent provinces. 1 Various trading modes may be discerned, including cabotage, short-haul trade, inter-regional commerce, and private long-haul trade. Largely missing thus far are the wrecks of ships that participated in the annona transport, the “backbone of Late Roman shipping”. 2 Each year, an enormous fleet of private ships under state contract hauled thousands of shiploads of Egyptian grain from Alexandria to Constantinople for public distribution,3 but no shipwrecks explicitly associated with these fleets have been found. Also largely invisible are the non-commercial transports associated with the annona militaris , the fiscal supply of foodstuffs destined for armies stationed on the empire‘s borders. The state supply-system became more formalized in 536 when Justinian created the quaestura exercitus , a prefecture that was granted administrative control and jurisdiction of Moesia Secunda, Scythia , Caria, the Aegean islands, and Cyprus. 4 Evidence suggests that the quaestor‘s main task was to ensure the supply, by sea, of agricultural products from the Aegean and NE Mediterranean to troops on the Danube frontier. 5 While no definitive grain ships have been found in the E Mediterranean — what M. McCormick has called the “annona paradox” 6 —, shipwrecks with the larger cargoes expected of state supply have remained rather elusive

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Geography · Jurisdiction · Mediterranean climate · Period (music · Political science · State (computer science · Archaeology and Historical Studies · History · Law · Law, logistics, and international trade · Maritime and Coastal Archaeology

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