If a sponge fisherman emerges from the water saying that he has just seen some eared cookies at the bottom of the sea, it is reasonable to think that oxygen has not been reaching him well. Fortunately, the young Mehmet Çakir was heard by expert ears in underwater archaeology.
It was the summer of 1982, and Çemal Pulak, a member of the Institute of Nautical Archeology (INA), founded by George Bass, one of the fathers of this scientific specialty, immediately recognized that the Turkish diver was referring to ingots “of bull’s skin â€. This is the name given to the typical rectangular shape, very pointed at the ends, similar to the leather of a bovine open in a channel, in which copper was melted to transport and market it during the Bronze Age.
An inspection team did not take long to go to the coordinates indicated by the fisherman. The archaeologists had not swum fifty meters out to sea from Uluburun, a craggy promontory translatable as “big capeâ€, when they stumbled, gaping, at a trail of “bullskin†ingots.
This unusual abundance of copper was just a welcome garland. The wreck that had been waiting for millennia at the end of that greenish trail of metal has provided, in the words of the INA, “a unique glimpse into the Bronze Age, its material cultures and aspects of construction, economic exchange and transportation.”
An archaeologist specialized in the marine voyages of that period fully agrees with this. Shelley Wachsmann affirms that “few if any Bronze Age excavations in the last fifty years have been more important than the Uluburun shipwreck”, as it provides “the most significant key to understanding navigation” in that frozen moment of prehistory late.
Like any sinking, this one brings together very diverse objects from the same moment, in this case with an astonishing variety, especially for such a bygone era. The Uluburun wreck represents, in short, a kind of vintage panoramic photo of those remote times.
The prospects were so promising that, after locating, marking and perimetering the wreck, Pulak scheduled its exploration ahead of any other INA project in Turkey. Not long after, in 1984, George Bass arrived from the United States to personally direct the first season of excavation. President of the entity and a living legend of underwater archeology since he recovered, in 1960, the also Turkish wreck of Cape Gelidonya, Bass delegated the works to Pulak, his regional vice president, starting in 1985.
A total of 6,613 hours of excavation and 22,413 immersions were necessary until the conclusion of the work in 1994, both due to the depth of the wreck and the delicacy required for its rescue. The dives were carried out in annual campaigns lasting quarterly or quarterly.
Presumably sunk by a storm, the ship lay uneven on the rocky underwater slope of the promontory. While her stern rested at 44 meters, the bow did so at 52, and her cargo, at 61. Under these conditions, the oxygen cylinders ran out in half an hour. It was a real ant job for divers. And very handmade, moreover, to affect as little as possible the state of the remains, scattered over an area of ​​almost 200 m2.
Part of the team of archaeologists floated on the wreck in the Virazon, their center of operations. It was a twenty-meter-long ship, a veteran of the Korean War, which the INA adapted as a research yacht in 1980 until the launch of the Virazon II in 2016. Diving bells descended from the ship, and even the ship ascended. material sucked in by the suction hoses.
The boat also acted as an umbilical cord for underwater personnel, for the cartographic laboratory from which a map of the site was drawn up by triangulation, and for the outpost to store cameras, tools, tape measures, metal reference marks, nets, ropes and other paraphernalia.
Meanwhile, a camp was opened on the coast at Uluburun Cape itself. The rest of the squad was deployed there, the bulk of the equipment and the pieces that were being recovered. The mainland base served as a link to the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology. Involved from the beginning in the recovery of the wreck, as it was found in Turkish waters under its jurisdiction, this institution, in the city that centuries ago was the Halicarnassus of the famous mausoleum, took over from the INA after the field work, completed in September 1994.
The new stage, which continues to the present, has been characterized by the meticulous analysis of the relics, their conservation and their exhibition. In the latter, the full-scale reproduction of the freighter’s hold stands out, permanently exhibited in the museum since 2000.
In the current cycle, immense advances have taken place in the knowledge of navigation during the Bronze Age and of the connections that it made possible between civilizations that were less impervious than imagined until now. An investigation determined in 2022 a surprising origin for the tin ingots that the wreck treasured. They were on board in the exact proportion (10:1) to be alloyed with the copper ships and together produce eleven tons of the still new bronze.
Two thirds of said tin would have been taken from the Taurus mountains, more or less neighboring the point of the shipwreck. However, a third came from a mine located in the west of remote Central Asia. For this, there had to be a complex land transport network that linked this distant region with the Mediterranean coast. This in the still prehistoric Bronze Age.
But it is not the only surprise reserved by Uluburun in this regard. Similarly, the INA records “glass ingots, unworked elephant tusks, ostrich egg shells and faience beads”, that is, varnished earthenware, in the shipment. It was about “raw materials from distant lands”, emphasizes the institution. The transport, the itinerary and the financing of this archaic freight, so exotic and diverse, seem to have been no less international.
The use of oak and cedar from Lebanon in the construction of the ship, twenty-four stone anchors found on board, a hundred and a half tiny weights, and, to top it off, thorny branches to hold the cargo in place, without moved, are all indications that the ship was made, manned and stowed the same as those of the ancient Mediterranean Levant. The Syrian-Palestinian coast, Cyprus or Egypt could thus have been the mooring port for this adventurous ship barely fifteen meters long, with a primitive keel, a single mast and a single lateral steering oar.
On the other hand, it is estimated that the cargo could have been Mycenaean, judging by the majority class of ingots, ceramic evidence and some personal effects belonging to passengers or crew. Headed for a destination west of Cyprus, the ship might be headed for Rhodes. Another hypothesis is that she went to Mycenae, the booming Greek power at the time.
In accordance with all this, the luxury items could well have been gifts for kings, aristocrats or rich merchants, or an exchange between them. In the Mycenaean civilization, xenia was actually practiced. One aspect of such “hospitality†was the exchange of personal favors and expensive gifts to forge alliances with foreign magnates. Raw cargo materials such as metals, glass or ivory would have complemented, already with a commercial nature, this diplomatic and corporate foundation of the time.
The dating is another of the enigmas posed by the site. It is considered that the shipwreck could have occurred around 1320 BC. C., with a margin of error of fifteen years. To determine that date, everything from dendrochronological and radiocarbon analyzes of wood found on board to crosses of historical and archaeological references have been carried out. A gold scarab among the remains, alluding to the Egyptian queen Nefertiti, who died around 1331 BC. C., and Mycenaean pottery such as that found in Miletus after the devastating Hittite raid of 1312 BC. C. have been key to deducing that date.
