The wreck at Point Iria was a chance
discovery by the present president of the Hellenic Institute of
Marine Archaeogy (H.I.M.A.) Nikos Tsouchlos, in 1962. In 1971
Tsouchlos paid a second visit to the wreck with the archaeologist
Charalambos Kritzas, Peter Throckmorton and Bruno Vailati, who
filmed and photographed the site. Their first impression at the
time was that it was a cargo ship of the Geometric or Archaic
period. In 1990 the archaeologist Charalambos Pennas directed
a survey which was organized and carried out by the Institute.
It took four continuous excavation
periods under the direction of Charalambos Pennas, from 1991-1994,
to plan and excavate the area of the wreck, which was spread over
some hundred square metres on a sloping bottom with sandy intervals
and patches of concretions and rocks. The areas east and west
of the wreck were also investigated, and many finds of earlier,
contemporary and later periods were located, from which we concluded
that the locality was a highly dangerous one for shipping. The
objects we discovered and raised consisted chiefly of pottery,
but we also found a stone anchor and different sized stones and
river stones that may have formed part of the ship's ballast,
as well as small pieces of wood and some organic remains.
The ship, which was wrecked shortly
before it was able to round Point Iria, was carrying a mixed cargo
of pottery consisting chiefly of large transport vessels (Cypriot
pithoi and LH/LM IIIB 2 pithoid jars) and medium size ones (Cretan
stirrup-jars, Cypriot jugs and an amphora with incised linear
signs). The various small pots, like the cooking pots and juglet,
may have belonged to the crew. Lastly, the cargo also included
a few decorated Mycenaean vases in fine ware (a deep bowl krater
and one or two deep bowls). Dates for all these finds, irrespective
of their provenance, of around 1200 BC leave no doubt that they
all belonged to the cargo of the same ship.
A preliminary study of the pottery
from the Iria wreck shows that it comprises one of the rarest
and most important assemblages of pottery to have been found so
far in Greek waters. The petrographic examination of the clay
of the vases by Dr. Peter Day is expected to produce valuable
supplementary evidence for the origins of the ship's cargo. His
preliminary study, parts of which we shall be presenting, reinforces
our initial observations about the provenance and date of a large
part of the finds.
A small stone anchor of composite
type with three holes was found at a depth of 13 metres just above
the main pottery concentration. It weighs some 25 kgs and is made
from conglomerate rock. Its position a little higher up than the
main concentration of the cargo is a possible indication that
it belonged to the Cypriot ship, but it canot be dated with certainty
from its type and shape. The petrological analysis that will be
made may produce more evidence for its provenance.
Two more stone anchors, one with
a single hole and the other with three, were found close to Point
Iria, but their considerable distance from the site of the wreck
(about 150 metres) eliminates any possibility that they belong
to it.
A few small pieces of wood that were
found may have come from the ship, but the hull itself has not
survived. Three organic remains are of considerable interest;
when they were found buried in the sand, they were cylindrical,
but they lost all their shape when they were brought to the surface.
They were probably pieces of rope like those found in the Cape
Gelidonya wreck. An examination of the wood and probable pieces
of rope hopefully will tell us what they were and their date.
The complete absence of metal objects, in spite of careful excavation
and surveying the whole wreck area with a metal detector, is curious.
The Iria ship must have been wrecked
by the sudden onset of bad weather which drove it onto the rocky
shore before it was able to weather Point Iria. This is concluded
from the fact that the wreck lies some 10 metres from the shore
and that the cargo is scattered about haphazardly. Our own personal
experience during the four months we were working on the wreck,
in the course of which we had heavy seas and high winds that twice
snapped the cables holding our floating platform, and the information
supplied by the local fishermen, both confirmed that the locality
of the wreck is very dangerous for vessels approaching from the
west. The force with which the ship struck the rocks as it was
driven by the west wind is perhaps indicated by the position of
the deep bowl krater 50 metres to the south of the main concentration
of the cargo. The deep bowl krater, an open, relatively light
vase, must have been carried some distance away before it slowly
filled and sank to the bottom.
This hypothesis perhaps tells us
something about the final route of the ship. After leaving the
harbours at the northwest end of the Gulf of Argos, it was sailing
towards the eastern part.
On the basis of the results from
the 1990 - 1994 investigations at Point Iria, the Cypro-Mycenaean
wreck can be securely dated to the end of the 13th Century BC.
The cargo already raised from the wreck site, contains a mixture
of Mycenaean and Cypriot pottery and is very likely to belong
to a Cypriot ship heading towards the Argolid. The size of the
cargo, combined with the presence of a substantial Cretan group
of transport jars, points to a boat of medium size that sailed
from a harbour in southern Cyprus. It sunk off Point Iria, perhaps,
before reaching its final destination, at some harbour town in
eastern Argolid.
As a one-period underwater cargo
find, the pottery so far known from the Iria wreck, which is Cretan-Mycenaean,
Helladic-Mycenaean and Cypriot, presents an instructive chronological
homogeneity. It is also extremely interesting that this body of
pottery includes typical forms of Cretan-Mycenaean and Cypriot
transport vases that were very widespread during the 13th century
BC, i.e. the stirrup-jars and the pithoi, whose distribution covers
a wide area of the Mediterranean. Within the framework of the
long-distance trade of the period, their traffic can now be followed
from the coast of Syria (Ugarit), Cyprus and Ulu Burun in Lycia,
as far as Agrigento in Sicily, the Aeolian Islands north of Sicily
and Sardinia. The Cypro-Mycenaean wreck site of Iria gives valuable
material evidence for trade and navigation during the Late Mycenaean
period in the Aegean and beyond. It also throws new light on one
of the most crucial periods of Greek and Cypriot protohistory,
a period during or at the end of which the breakdown began of
the Great Mycenaean Koine in the Eastern Mediterranean.
It confirms the links between the
Argolid and Cyprus at the end of the 13th century BC. Such contacts
and commercial transactions must have been frequent, because we
are not dealing here with a special shipment ordered by some central
authority, but with a humble, "everyday” trading expedition.
Crete forms a natural intermediate stopping point on the Argolid-Cyprus
sea-route, from the point of view of both navigation and trade,
given the close relations between what was now Mycenaean Crete
and the Argolid and the traditional Cyprus-Crete connection. A
similar conclusion was reached by Prof. Thomas Palaima in his
important paper "Maritime matters in the Linear B Tablets”.
We have to do with a wreck within
the context of close Cypro-Mycenaean contact without the presence
of objects coming from other civilizations. In contrast to the
ships of Ulu Burun and Cape Gelidonya, the Iria ship made its
final voyage, at least, from Cyprus to the Argolid in the midst
of a predominantly Mycenaean environment of the time.