Rayney
12-19-2002, 12:21 AM
Roman ships pulled from mud
From correspondents in Italy
December 18, 2002
ARCHAELOGISTS cautiously raised a 2,000-year-old Roman ship today from a muddy site packed with a score of ancient boats just a short walk from the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
The 12-metre-long ship is the largest and best-preserved of about 20 Roman vessels discovered by chance in a former river bed in 1998.
The ships sank, probably due to floods, between the second century BC and the sixth century AD while docked on a long-vanished river tributary.
The vessel hauled up today, which was the second boat removed from the mud, is remarkable because it is believed to be the only warship among those discovered.
However, it is just one part of an extraordinary find that project director Andrea Camilli described as "an encyclopedia of ancient navigation".
In merchant ships still buried, experts have found almost-intact shipments of wine, food, clothes and construction materials from the Mediterranean. Among the most exotic finds were the remains of a North African lion, probably destined to delight spectators at a gladiatorial spectacle in a Roman town.
"We often have the wrong idea about ancient peoples: They travelled and traded just like we do today," Camilli said. "Although this harbour was relatively unimportant, we have found here products originating in faraway places such as North Africa or the valley of the Danube."
The ship raised today was covered in a protective fibreglass cast for its trip to the restoration laboratory, but it revealed the sleek shape of a fast oar-powered vessel, armed with a reinforced prow designed to ram enemy ships.
"It's the best preserved ship of antiquity ever found," Camilli said.
It will need to undergo a painstaking restoration process over the next four years before being displayed in Pisa's newly opened Museo delle Navi, the Museum of Ships.
One key puzzle for researchers has been why layers of ancient ships sank over eight centuries in the same place, a one-time harbour on a long-vanished tributary of the River Arno, on whose banks Pisa and Florence are built.
Archaeologists now believe at least five catastrophic floods, which periodically destroyed the harbour throughout the centuries, were responsible. Until the fall of the Roman Empire, the harbour was stubbornly rebuilt after each tragedy.
The silt that covered the ships was the key to their preservation, providing for an airless environment that prevented decomposition. But in Roman times, the waves of mud that obliterated the harbour meant certain death for anyone caught in the flood.
An extraordinary testimony to this has already been transferred to the Museo delle Navi: the complete skeleton of a drowned Roman sailor who was trapped under fallen ship rigging and died clutching his pet basset hound, whose bones also survived.
The Associated Press
From correspondents in Italy
December 18, 2002
ARCHAELOGISTS cautiously raised a 2,000-year-old Roman ship today from a muddy site packed with a score of ancient boats just a short walk from the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
The 12-metre-long ship is the largest and best-preserved of about 20 Roman vessels discovered by chance in a former river bed in 1998.
The ships sank, probably due to floods, between the second century BC and the sixth century AD while docked on a long-vanished river tributary.
The vessel hauled up today, which was the second boat removed from the mud, is remarkable because it is believed to be the only warship among those discovered.
However, it is just one part of an extraordinary find that project director Andrea Camilli described as "an encyclopedia of ancient navigation".
In merchant ships still buried, experts have found almost-intact shipments of wine, food, clothes and construction materials from the Mediterranean. Among the most exotic finds were the remains of a North African lion, probably destined to delight spectators at a gladiatorial spectacle in a Roman town.
"We often have the wrong idea about ancient peoples: They travelled and traded just like we do today," Camilli said. "Although this harbour was relatively unimportant, we have found here products originating in faraway places such as North Africa or the valley of the Danube."
The ship raised today was covered in a protective fibreglass cast for its trip to the restoration laboratory, but it revealed the sleek shape of a fast oar-powered vessel, armed with a reinforced prow designed to ram enemy ships.
"It's the best preserved ship of antiquity ever found," Camilli said.
It will need to undergo a painstaking restoration process over the next four years before being displayed in Pisa's newly opened Museo delle Navi, the Museum of Ships.
One key puzzle for researchers has been why layers of ancient ships sank over eight centuries in the same place, a one-time harbour on a long-vanished tributary of the River Arno, on whose banks Pisa and Florence are built.
Archaeologists now believe at least five catastrophic floods, which periodically destroyed the harbour throughout the centuries, were responsible. Until the fall of the Roman Empire, the harbour was stubbornly rebuilt after each tragedy.
The silt that covered the ships was the key to their preservation, providing for an airless environment that prevented decomposition. But in Roman times, the waves of mud that obliterated the harbour meant certain death for anyone caught in the flood.
An extraordinary testimony to this has already been transferred to the Museo delle Navi: the complete skeleton of a drowned Roman sailor who was trapped under fallen ship rigging and died clutching his pet basset hound, whose bones also survived.
The Associated Press