Dozens of amphorae from ancient shipwreck found off Sicily

Dozens of amphorae of a type more frequently found in British waters have been discovered at an ancient shipwreck site off the coast of Sicily. The wreck is between 2,100 and 1,900 years old and contains a large proportion of Richborough 527 type amphorae, a vessel named after its type site of Richborough, Kent, in southern England.

The evidence of the wreck of an ancient cargo ship was first spotted in January 2022 by anglers from Avola about three miles off the coast of the Vendicari Nature Reserve in Syracuse. They reported it to Sicily’s Superintendence of the Sea. The Superintendence employed divers from the Capo Murro Diving Center in Syracuse to explore and document the wreck site earlier this year. From scans and photographs made by the divers, experts were able to create a 3D photogrammetric composite of the whole site.

The team found approximately 40 amphorae visible on the seabed at a depth of 230 feet. Some were still grouped in their original alignment as they had been stored in the hold of the ship. No remains of the ship itself are visible, so if they have survived the millennia, they are buried under the sand with the rest of the cargo.

The Richborough 527 type amphora is characterized by a thick rim and horizontal ribbing on the body. Excavations on the Aeolian island of Lipari found the largest deposit of them, several thousands of examples, from the pottery workshop that produced these vessels from the 1st century B.C. through the 1st century A.D. Studies of the contents of Richborough 527 amphorae suggest they may have been used to transport alum from Sicily’s copious volcanic deposits to the rest of the Roman world.

Alum was a key ingredient in several industrial applications in ancient Rome, including as a mordant for dying cloth and to create a refined white leather that could be easily dyed for decorative purposes. The 1st century Greek physician and Roman army surgeon Pedanius Dioscorides recommends in his pharmacopeia De Materia Medica (Book 5, Chapter 123) alum as a treatment for everything from ulcers, loose teeth and eyelid growths to ear discharge and leprosy. He also notes that Lipari was one of the sources of the best kind of alum for medical use.

Even though they were made in Sicily, the amphorae have not often been found in area shipwrecks, which makes sense if the ships were loaded with the cargo there and then sallied forth to their destinations. Richborough 527 amphorae or fragments of them have been found in many locations in the Roman world, including Spain, France, Portugal, Malta, Germany and most frequently, southern England.

“These are rather rare amphorae,” said the regional councilor for cultural heritage, Francesco Paolo Scarpinato, “whose discovery represents a unique opportunity to study both the cargo and the wreck in greater depth. This discovery will allow us to acquire new information on ancient trade routes and the commerce of valuable goods in the Mediterranean.” Future studies will verify whether the amphorae are of the same type as those found in the 1990s in Lipari, linked to the trade of alum, a mineral whose extraction is documented in ancient times. If this hypothesis were confirmed, the discovery would enrich our knowledge of ancient trade routes in the Mare Nostrum basin.

* This article was originally published here