Off the island of Antikythera, between Crete and Greece, a sponge diver found a shipwreck containing marble and bronze statues, glass bowls, an astrolabe, 19 amphoras from Roman Greece and one from Roman Italy. The Italic amphora dates to the 80s B.C.
1907
A shipwreck was spotted by a sponge diver off Mahdia, Tunisia. Excavated by a French team from 1908 to 1913, the wreck’s cargo included about 70 unfinished columns of Greek marble. The ship can be dated to the 80s B.C. by Roman and Punic amphoras—used by the crew—found among the remains.
1930
Near Albenga, Italy, a shipwreck was discovered. It was excavated from 1957 through the early 1970s by Italian archaeologists, who raised 11,000 amphoras from the second quarter of the first century B.C.
1948
Divers constructing a sewer outlet noticed a wreck at Grand Congloué, near Marseilles. The wreck was excavated from 1952 to 1957 by archaeologist Fernand Benoît and marine explorer Jacques Cousteau. This wreck, in fact, turned out to be two wrecks, one on top of the other. The lower wreck contained 400 amphoras from the early second century B.C.; the upper wreck, 1,500 amphoras from the late second or early first century B.C. Most of the upper wreck’s amphoras were stamped “SES,” the trademark of the Sestius family of Cosa.
1958
A wreck was spotted off Spargi, in northern Sardinia. Excavated in 1961, it contained 300 Roman amphoras from the 80s B.C.
1960
The Lazareto wreck was found near Mahón, on the island of Menorca, east of Spain. The wreck held several hundred amphoras from the early second century B.C.
1997
Marine explorer Robert Ballard and archaeologist Anna Marguerite McCann discovered several wrecks in deep water off Skerki Bank, between Sardinia and Tunisia. One ship was a first-century B.C. Roman vessel with amphoras from the Sestius factory at Cosa.
