For underwater archaeologists, even a few shards of ancient pottery can count as buried treasure. But sometimes, explorers hit the artifact jackpot.
A joint Greek-American expedition announced this week that they have just uncovered a whopping 22 shipwrecks around the Fourni archipelago—a find they say adds 12 percent to the total number of known ancient shipwrecks in Greece.
The newfound wrecks include cargo that dates from the Archaic Period (700 to 480 B.C.) all the way up to the 16th century, and the team says the finds could change the way historians think about ancient Greek trade. For instance, some of the amphorae styles found around the wrecks have never been seen before on the seafloor.
“We knew some of these amphora types existed from fragmentary evidence on land, but we’d never found them as a wreck before,” says expedition member Peter Campbell, co-director of the RPM Nautical Foundation. The American maritime research non-profit collaborated with the Greek Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities on the recent shipwreck hunt. It is estimated the archaeological expedition will be completed by 2018.