Speakers

Dr Damian  Robinson
Director, Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology

Biography:

Damian Robinson is Director of Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology (OCMA). He holds an MA in Ancient Maritime Societies. His research interests include maritime archaeology, maritime-terrestrial interface, ancient trade and urbanism. He is currently directing the OCMA–IEASM excavation of a 5th century BCE-shipwreck (wreck 43) from Heracleion, Egypt, and writing on a building survey and excavation in Insula VI.i of Pompeii, Italy. He has four published works, including Thonis–Heracleion in Context (2015), Maritime Archaeology and Ancient Trade in the Mediterranean (2011), and A Roman Port Town in Tunisia (2011).

Abstract:

The Context of the Ships from Thonis–Heracleion

The sixty-five ancient ships discovered in the submerged port of Thonis–Heracleion by the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology (IEASM) are a remarkable assemblage. Dating back to 8th–2nd centuries BCE, these vessels, which are mostly Egyptian in origin, offer the opportunity to illuminate our knowledge of local shipbuilding during the Late and Ptolemaic periods, for both river and seafaring craft. Yet, this group of ships is not entirely the outcome of the incidental accumulation of vessels in this port over a prolonged period of time. Consequently, the purpose of this paper is to consider the different types of formation processes involved in the creation of this assemblage. Catastrophic losses that led to this assemblage of sixty-five shipwrecks are actually minor in Thonis–Heracleion and more deliberate forms of purposive deposition also need to be considered, which include ritual sacrifice, structural adaptation and reuse, and abandonment, as well as wrecking. The vessels are also components of the wider landscape of the city and its port, which also needs to be carefully considered. This is a dynamic environment in which environmental factors, such as the rise of sea level, the silting up of the northern access passage to the Nile and the transfer of the city itself onto the Central Island also need to be accounted for when reconstructing the context of the ships from Thonis–Heracleion.