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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Marine archaeologists investigating the ancient shipwreck that yielded the Antikythera mechanism — a complex, bronze, geared device that predicted eclipses and showed the movements of the Sun, Moon and planets in the sky — have recovered a wealth of treasures, including bronze and marble statue pieces, a sarcophagus lid and a mysterious bronze disc decorated with a bull. The artefacts were trapped under boulders in a previously unexplored part of the site near the island of Antikythera, Greece, and the researchers think that large parts of at least seven statues are still buried nearby.

The discoveries are "extremely exciting", says Kenneth Lapatin, curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. Only a handful of bronze statues survive from the ancient world, and they have almost invariably been treated and altered by previous conservators, undergoing processes that destroyed much of the information scientists might have gleaned from them. "Technology has improved so much," says Lapatin. "We can learn from these untreated finds."

[...] The team has made a stream of discoveries since work began in 2014, including wine jars, giant anchors, gold jewellery and a human skeleton, which is now being analysed for DNA. But the statues have remained hidden until now.

On 4 October, the team announced that during a 16-day dive season the previous month, they found several major statue pieces, including two marble feet attached to a plinth, part of a bronze robe or toga, and a bronze male arm, with two fingers missing but otherwise beautifully preserved. A slim build and "turning hand" gesture suggest that the arm may belong to a philosopher, says Theodoulou.

[...] Fresh, untreated finds such as those from Antikythera will give researchers the opportunity to use modern techniques to study a significant aspect of ancient Greek life — for example, by looking at casting methods, which precise alloys were used and whether the statues were made for export or had been previously displayed.

Foley and Theodoulou's team also recovered an intriguing bronze disc or wheel, about eight centimetres across, attached to four metal arms with holes for pins. A layer of hardened sediment hides its internal structure, but it superficially resembles the Antikythera mechanism, and researchers had initially hoped that it might be part of that ancient device: perhaps the gearing that calculated the positions of the planets, which is missing from the find.

But preliminary X-ray imaging conducted in an Athens hospital on 25 September revealed a surprise: instead of gear wheels, the image of a bull appeared.

[...] The team plans to return to Antikythera in May 2018, to break up the boulders and excavate beneath. "It's going to be a major operation," says Foley. "But we think it will be spectacular."

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