Bronze Arm Found in Famous Shipwreck Points to More Treasure Below

Brendan Foley, an underwater archaeologist, holds a 2,000-year-old bronze arm recovered from the Antikythera shipwreck.

Marine archaeologists announced new findings from their most
recent excavation of the roughly 2,000-year-old Antikythera wreck.

A bronze statue’s orphaned arm. A corroded disc adorned with a bull. Preserved wooden planks. These are among the latest treasures that date back to the dawn of the Roman Empire, discovered amid the ruins of the Antikythera shipwreck, a sunken bounty off the coast of a tiny island in Greece.

Marine archaeologists working on a project called Return to Antikythera announced these findings on Wednesday from their most recent excavation of the roughly 2,000-year-old wreck, which was first discovered 115 years ago. They said the haul hints at the existence of at least seven more bronze sculptures still buried beneath the seafloor. Bronze sculptures from that era are rare because they were often melted down to make swords, shields and other items. Only about 50 intact examples have survived, so if the team can salvage the submerged statues, it would be a remarkable recovery of ancient artifacts.

Members of the Return to Antikythera project dive into the water off the coast of Greece.

“Say you discovered there are another seven Leonardo paintings that no one knew existed and the prospect of finding them is dangling before your eyes,” said Kenneth Lapatin a curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles who was not involved in the project. “That’s what this is like for classical archaeologists and those who study ancient Greek and Roman art.”

For more than a century the wreck has yielded a trove of antiquities, from bronze and marble statues of Olympian gods and heroes to the mysterious Antikythera mechanism, a hand-held device for tracking planetary movements and predicting eclipses that is often called the “first computer.” Last year the team also recovered human skeletal remains at the site from which they have retrieved DNA.

Further investigation into the vessel’s cargo and wooden structure could provide insights into where the ship came from, where it was going and who were the crew that perished when it went down.

A Handful of Treasure

When sponge divers first found the wreck in the early 1900s, they uncovered six bronze right arms. But it took decades and new technologies to uncover the seventh.

A corroded bronze hand from the Antikythera shipwreck in southern Greece.

During their most recent dives in September, the team used a custom built high-tech metal detector to uncover items hidden in the sand. Alexander Sotiriou, one of the project’s divers, stumbled upon the bronze arm buried more than a foot and a half below the sediment at a depth of about 160 feet below the sea surface.

“We knew from the very first moment that this was a significant finding,” Mr. Sotiriou said. He spent most of his hour’s worth of air trying to pry the heavy object from beneath a boulder. Other divers with the project took over and retrieved the green, encrusted limb that extended from shoulder to middle finger tip.

Using a specially designed metal detector, underwater archaeologists found a bronze arm beneath sediment.

“It’s missing a couple of fingers but it’s still a magnificent finding. You can see the beauty of this arm,” he said. “You see the muscles, you see the tendons, you see the fingers. You see all the details that you can admire on bare skin.”

Because the limbs appeared to have been fragments of statues, rather than individual parts being transported, the researchers believe that the rest of their bodies are waiting to be found.

A Disc for a ‘First Computer?’

During its most recent dives, the team also uncovered a small, bronze disc with four knobs. Each tab on the trinket had a hole in it which may have been used to screw the object into something to act as a cover. It was just as corroded as the arm.

When Brendan Foley, co-director for the project and an archaeologist at Lund University in Sweden, found the item he couldn’t believe his luck. He thought it may have been a missing piece to the Antikythera mechanism — perhaps the rarest needle in their underwater haystack.

Researchers are studying whether a small, bronze disc they found is a missing part of the Antikythera mechanism

“This thing emerges and I said ‘Holy cow! Come over here guys. Doesn’t this look like part of the mechanism?’” he said. “And we all started laughing because it couldn’t possibly be. But it sure looks convincing.”

They sent it to a laboratory in Athens for X-rays and found that beneath its green and black decay there was a decorative bull. They will perform more experiments to find out what it is. Although they have not ruled out whether it could be a part of the Antikythera mechanism they said that it could just as easily be an adornment of the ship or a vase.

The green and black corrosion on the bronze disc recovered from the Antikythera shipwreck, left, conceals a decorative bull that can be revealed under X-ray, right.

“If it is from the Antikythera mechanism it is a very, very perfect find,” said Angeliki G. Simosi, director of the Greek Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities in Athens. “All of the world will speak about it.”

The Story from the Depths

The ship that carried the treasures of Antikythera was something like an ancient supertanker or luxury liner that carried grain and artwork for trading in the Mediterranean, including marble and bronze statues being shipped to the richest of the rich, according to Dr. Foley. The site thus provides a peek not just into the lives of the elite, but also into the blooming global and urban society at the beginning of the Roman Empire.

“We’re looking at the biggest ancient ship ever investigated by underwater archaeologists,” said Dr. Foley.

Researchers found wood belonging to the ancient ship

Measuring an estimated 160-feet long, the ship was like the Titanic of its time. It met its iceberg in the form of a violent storm that smashed it against the island’s cliff, scientists believe. The ship then had a turbulent trip to the bottom of the ocean where it most likely rolled several times, flinging its treasure, and goods across the seafloor. In the two millenniums since, earthquakes and landslides have rocked its remains, further breaking and burying its trove of Hellenistic and Classical pottery and artwork.

But in their latest dives, the team recovered wooden planks and pieces of the ship’s frame, which can help nail down its country of origin, which have recently come into question.