In 1973, when sponge diver Mehmet Aşkin  led George Bass to the 11th century "Glass Wreck" at Serçe Limanl, Turkey, he revealed another location which had also produced amphoras.  Closer to the harbor mouth, it was known that the site had been heavily looted of amphoras prior to 1973.  lying 35 to 37 meters deep, local rumors stated that 200 amphoras had been taken from the site over the years.  An initial dive in 1973, and a further probe in 1978 indicated that enough amphoras were still present to warrant excavation.

Cemal Pulak, by then a veteran of several excavation seasons with INA since 1975, supervised a  test of  a Hellenistic wreck site near the entrance of "Sparrow Harbor."  Looted of many amphoras in the past, almost nothing of the site was visible on the seabed before testing began. Pulak and Bass were surprised to find that the looters had removed only the visible upper layers of amphoras. Removal of deep sand uncovered hundreds of amphoras identified as having been made on the nearby island of Knidos.

The excavation began in 1978 as an exploratory trench, and continued in 1979 as an adjunct to the meticulous dig occurring on the nearby Glass wreck.  The final season in 1980 was conducted from INA's newly acquired research vessel Virazon.

The team used methods of excavation developed on past projects, some dating back to the pioneering efforts at Cape Gelidonya less than two decades earlier.  The grid, balloons, and the decompression stop buckets remain standards into the twenty-first century.

More than a hundred amphoras, in two sizes, were recorded on the site plan and raised to the surface during this initial work.  Beneath these were more surprises.  In one two-meter grid section, a test pit was excavated to a depth of more than a meter, revealing the presence of a variety of material including dozens of small jars, pitchers, bowls, millstones, and finally, the first evidence of a preserved hull.   

Proper recording of the artifacts as they are found lying in the wreck is paramount to understanding the site and its relation to the cultures of the time involved.    Artifacts are brought to the surface, conserved and cleaned.  The material is then made available for study and for display to the public.

In the last days of the season, what seemed to be a rocky slope above the wreck was found to be instead a massive rock-slide of boulders that lie partly over the wreck.  The removal of these boulders proved too difficult and too dangerous to allow complete excavation, and the project was not continued beyond the summer of 1980.

Amphoras and their stamps indicated the ship sank around 280 B.C.  Finds of millstones, marble and lead rings, a section of lead pipe, and parts of the vessel's lead-sheathed hull gives valuable insights for the trade and ship construction of the Hellenistic Age.

	A stamp impression on the handle of one of the amphoras. D. Frey
Amphoras from the wreck in the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology.
	Twenty seven jars of uniform size and shape were found (heights vary between 8.2 and 9.3 cm.).  They may have originally contained unguents as the narrow mouth and carefully formed rim indicate their use for such valuable liquids. The jars may originate in Egypt.               D. Frey
This globular amphora has comparable parallels to ones from Pergamun and Tarsus, but enough differences exist to mark this one as unusual. Drawing by Sema Pulak.   More pottery drawings

Ralph K. Pedersen, Editor
2003, The Hellenistic Shipwreck at Serçe Limani
URL, http://ina.tamu.edu/SLhell/SLhellenistic.htm

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