466 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1963 



have been used by the crew of the ship, but the vast majority were 

 broken before being stored on board. One perfectly preserved wicker 

 basket bottom was found still holding tightly packed scraps of metal. 

 Similar founder's hoards have been found on land and it was known 

 from these that old utensils were commonly melted and recast in 

 Mycenaean times. A swage block and a possible stone anvil make 

 it almost certain that a smith traveled on board the ship. Numerous 

 whetstones, found in the "cabin" area, would have been used to 

 sharpen newly made tools. 



From the area assumed to be the cabin of the ship came such per- 

 sonal possessions as scarabs, weights, pottery, stone mace-heads, pieces 

 of crystal, a cylinder seal, an oil lamp, and even traces of a meal: 

 olive pits and hsh bones were foimd imbedded in concretion. An 

 astragal was probably only for playing the popular ancient game of 

 knucklebones. The only nonmetallic objects certainly not from the 

 cabin area were two stone mortars and a jar of glass beads. 



A study of the ship and its cargo allows us to reconstruct some- 

 thing of its history. The bits of broken pottery give a date of around 

 1200 B.C.J when the entire eastern Mediterranean was in a state of 

 upheaval. The main part of the cargo was certainly from Cyprus, 

 known as the copper center of the late Bronze Age; not only the 

 ingots, but 232 of 302 bronze objects found on board find their 

 closest parallels on Cyprus. 



Although the ship loaded its cargo in Cyprus, there is no reason 

 to assume that it was Cypriot. Egj^ptian tomb paintings show 

 both Cretan Minoans and Syrians bringing copper "oxhide" ingots 

 to the pharaoh as tribute. The pottery seems to have a mixed back- 

 ground, but the lamp — the most likely of the terra cotta objects to 

 have been a permanent item in the ship — is Syrian. Some of the 

 weights are of a type and standard used m Egypt, Syria, and Cyprus, 

 and tell us little. The scarabs and cylinder seal, while possibly 

 trinkets picked up en route, seem also to be Syrian. There is also 

 a possibility that the tin originated in Syria. Such evidence, although 

 not conclusive, led the author to believe that we were dealing with a 

 Syrian merchantman that had picked up its cargo in Cyprus. Since 

 that time an analysis of the wood has shown that the hull was 

 probably made with Syrian wood, while the brushwood, surely picked 

 up with the metal cargo, seems to be Cypriot. 



"With the lessons learned at Gelidonya it was possible to devise more 

 efficient methods of working mider water for the next project. This 

 was a Byzantine wreck lying on a slope in 100 to 130 feet of water 

 just off Yassi Island near Bodrum. The greater depth limited daily 

 diving times to the extent that mechanical aids, offering both speed 

 and accuracy, became essential to the architect. Three new devices 

 were tried (fig. 1) . The first was a pair of plane tables set on opposite 



