CULTURE

More ancient wrecks, pottery found in Greek ships’ graveyard

More ancient wrecks, pottery found in Greek ships’ graveyard

Greece’s culture ministry says a Greek-US team has located traces of three more ancient shipwrecks with pottery cargoes, and two from later times, in a rich ships’ graveyard in the eastern Aegean Sea.

All were found last month off Fourni island and its surrounding islets, between the larger islands of Ikaria and Samos. The older ones date to the 4th and 2nd centuries B.C. and the 5th-6th centuries AD.

The find raises to 58 the number of wrecks located since 2015 around Fourni, a notoriously dangerous point on the ancient shipping route.

Apart from the cargoes of amphorae – jars that contained wine, oil and foodstuffs – divers also recovered a group of 2nd-century AD terracotta lamps, incised with the names of the Corinthian artisans who made them. [AP]

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