The Team

The Smothers-Bruni Expedition to Pabuç Burnu was conducted under the auspices of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology and George Bass, his final excavation before retiring from the field to concentrate on publications, speaking tours, fundraising, and personal pursuits.  Day-to-day operations and the ongoing conservation, study, and publication of the wreck are the responsibilities of his two Assistant Directors, Elizabeth Greene and Mark Polzer, who co-directed the field work. The excavation was permitted by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and supported by Oğuz Alpözen, director of the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology.  Yaşar Yıldız was the Ministry representative for the two seasons of excavation.

The excavation team consisted primarily of INA staff members, supplemented with archaeology students from Turkey, Australia, England, and the United States.  The INA staff included project conservator Asaf Oron, Sheila Matthews, who mapped the site, veterans Don Frey and Robin Piercy, INA adjunct professor Faith Hentschel, ship captains and submersible pilots Feyyaz Subay and Murat Tilev, and crew members Zafer Gül and Bayram Kosar.  Hüseyin Aldemir, who has worked on previous INA projects in Turkey, served as an additional crew member in 2002.  Both Bayram and Hüseyin received their scuba diving certification during the excavation, thereafter aiding in logistical work underwater.

Turkish archeology students Orkan Koyağasioğlu, Volkan Kaya, Evren Türkmenoğlu, Selda Ozhan, and Deniz Soyarslan provided invaluable assistance excavating, mapping, registering and cataloguing artifacts, photographing objects, and assisting with the hull recording.

Several other archaeology students joined our excavation for limited periods, including Corioli Souter from the Western Australian Maritime Museum, Timothy Kane and Jon Swanson from Texas A&M University, and Ioannis Triantafillidis from the University of Bristol.


Post-excavation Conservation and Study.

The continued support of Oğuz Alpözen, his successor Yaşar Yıldız, and their excellent museum staff facilitates the ongoing conservation and study of the artifacts residing now in the Bodrum Museum.  Asaf Oron oversees the conservation of all materials from the wreck at the Museum and in the Nixon Griffis Conservation Laboratory at INA's Bodrum Researach Center (INA-BRC).  Elizabeth Greene is overseeing the publication of the shipwreck and undertaking studies on the socio-economic context of the wreck in the sixth-century B.C. Mark Lawall, at the University of Manitoba, is principal investigator of the ceramics recovered from the wreck, including transport amphoras and smaller shipboard items.  His study has thus far provided the best evidence for the date of the wreck.  Mark Polzer is principal investigator of the ship's hull remains, supervising their conservation, study, and publication.  He is also coordinating the various material analyses of the wood, tars, and organic remains recovered from the wreck.  Brian Jordan, then at the University of Minnesota, and Nili Liphschitz at Tel Aviv University's Institute of Archaeology, identified the various types of wood employed in the hull components.  Peter Kuniholm and his team at Cornell University's Malcolm and Carolyn Wiener Laboratory for Aegean and Near Eastern Dendrochrolonoly analyzed wood samples from the hull for dendrochronological dating.  Samples of the resin lining many of the amphoras from the wreck, and of the pitch coating used to waterproof the interior of the hull, are being analyzed by Curt Beck and his team at the Amber Research Laboratory at Vassar College.  Nancy DeBono, at the Palynology Laboratory at Texas A&M University, is studying the organic remains and sediment samples collected from the intact amphoras and other containers.