Overview
- The excavation team and Turkey’s culture ministry announced Wednesday that divers recovered more than 30 amphorae and three stone anchors roughly 30 metres below the surface near Kekova Island.
- Researchers dated the site to about 4,400–4,700 years ago by comparing the amphorae’s shapes and decoration with pottery from Egypt and the Levant because no ship timbers survived for radiocarbon dating.
- Several amphorae still hold a thick glossy residue that specialists are chemically testing to determine whether it is olive oil, wine, tree resin, or material from later reuse.
- Archaeologists caution key uncertainties remain because the anchors were scattered at varying distances and the jars could have been reused, so ongoing conservation and lab work will be needed to confirm provenance and the proposed Early Bronze Age age.
- If the dating is upheld, the Kekova find would replace the Dokos wreck as the oldest known shipwreck and offer a rare direct glimpse of long-distance trade networks linking the Levant, Egypt, Anatolia and Crete.