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posted by janrinok on Tuesday November 10 2015, @03:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the anyone-for-treasure? dept.

A spate of shipwrecks recently found near a group of Greek islands has given researchers new insights into how trade routes and sailing technology evolved in the Eastern Mediterranean. And with more exploration planned, additional discoveries are still likely.

Over a stretch of two weeks in September, tips from local fishermen and sponge divers led a team of Greek and American archaeologists to the precise locations of 22 shipwrecks in a 17-square-mile area around the Fourni archipelago in the eastern Aegean.
...
The earliest wreck dates to the Archaic Period (700-480 B.C.), while the most recent is from the Late Medieval Period (16th century A.D.). Ships from the Classical Period (480-323 B.C.) and the Hellenistic Period (323-31 B.C.) were also found, though a majority—12 of the 22—sailed and sank at some point during the Late Roman Period (300-600 A.D.)


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by stormwyrm on Tuesday November 10 2015, @10:55AM

    by stormwyrm (717) on Tuesday November 10 2015, @10:55AM (#261188) Journal
    No, archaeology is actually more like this: Some guy digs up old stuff, studies it, obtains further knowledge of the past, and makes a contribution to humanity's understanding of its history. Most archaeology doesn't involve golden artefacts or anything so spectacular that could be sold off. A lot of the time the day to day work of serious archaeologists involves unglamorous but ultimately fascinating work like carefully sifting through a small patch of ground in an ancient site, sometimes for years, to pick up stuff left behind by ancient people such as broken pottery, rubbish, and even fossilised human faeces and analyse them to understand what they ate, how they did things, in general how they lived. I wonder how you could sell off a pile of fossilised human faeces to anyone. They'd be worth it only to an archaeologist who knew how to analyse them and perhaps reach the conclusion that those turds laid by people who lived thousands of years ago show that they, say, practised cannibalism at that point in their history for some reason.
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