Conditions were much more pleasant on the wreck itself, which lay on a shelf at a depth of between 125 and 145 feet.  On our first dives in 1999, the site looked much as it had upon discovery in 1996: a small mound of approximately 60 amphoras of at least two distinct types.  The first type, known from the 1996 survey, comes from the northern Greek city of Mende and dates to the third quarter of the fifth century B.C.  In antiquity, Mende was most famous for its wine, which was widely-exported and available in several varieties including mellow, honied, and dry.  But nine of ten Mendean amphoras from Tektaş Burnu are filled not with wine but with a gooey black pine tar.  This substance is currently being analyzed by Curt Beck of the Amber Research Laboratory at Vassar College.  A pine tar such as this may have been used to caulk or repair a ship, treat a ship’s tackle, line transport amphoras for carrying wine, or even flavor wine (ever tasted Greek retsina?). 

The second amphora type recognized in 1999 can be identified only as pseudo-Samian because of its morphological resemblance to jars produced on Samos.  We know now that the pseudo-Samian amphoras from Tektaş Burnu constitute the bulk of the ship’s cargo, with an estimated 200 total jars.  Pseudo-Samian amphoras have been found along the eastern coast of Black Sea, but archaeologists do not know where these jars were manufactured.  Deborah Carlson, professor in the Nautical Archaeology Program at Texas A&M University, pursued this problem through petrographic and chemical analysis of the pseudo-Samian amphoras from Tektaş Burnu.

In addition to the Mendean and pseudo-Samian jars, the Tektaş Burnu ship was carrying two Chian amphoras and lone examples of at least three other amphora types, some of which have yet to be positively identified.  The Chian amphoras belong to the last two phases of the bulbous-necked type, which is particularly significant because they affirm a date in the third quarter of the fifth century B.C.

Pottery finds from the wreck include more than a dozen table amphoras (7) that probably come from the island of Rhodes (though have been found in the Black Sea region), and a large intact askos (10), which has a strong parallel in a vessel from a fifth-century context at Miletus.  Other finds suggest that the ship had called at Chios (which is easy to see from Tektaş Burnu on a clear day): large and small one-handled cups (12), oil lamps, olpai, and black-glazed kantharoi from Tektaş Burnu all have strong Chian parallels.  The wreck also yielded several examples of undecorated pottery including a jug and a hydria, as well as three (rather poorly-fired) cooking pots or chytrai (5).  Given the unexceptional and utilitarian nature of much of the pottery, we were rather surprised to excavate, from the center of the wreck, a very fine alabastron (11) and a small black glaze askos.  

Mapping at Tektaş Burnu was the result of a two-pronged approach executed by Jeremy Green and Sheila Matthews.  Because visibility at the site was typically very good, and it was possible to photograph at 130 feet using only ambient light, we chose to rely on a system of photogrammetry as opposed to trilateration by meter-tape. The difficulty of mapping amphoras, which contain virtually no right angles, was overcome by the use of high-contrast vinyl labels designed by Tufan Turanli that were fixed over the mouth of each amphora.  While we found this photogrammetry system to be a very accurate and efficient means of mapping amphoras and amphora-like objects, the provenience of small, fragile or otherwise at-risk artifacts was often recorded using traditional direct measurements.  This bilateral approach meant that large groups of amphoras could be photographically recorded on any one dive, while fragile artifacts could be hand-measured and raised on the same dive. 

Of the ship itself we found only nails and bits of wood. However, during the 1999 season, an intriguing find surfaced in the deep sand at the uppermost part of the wreck.  This was a white marble disk, approximately 14 cm in diameter, flat on one side and convex on the other, still retaining the traces of a painted and incised band.  This disk, recently published by Troy Nowak in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, was one of the ship’s two marble eyes. Ship’s eyes, or ophthalmoi, are known not only from numerous ancient vase paintings, but also from the nearly one dozen examples excavated from the Athenian ship sheds and now on display in the Piraeus Archaeological Museum.  The discovery of the second eye the following season, just meters from where the first was found, indicates that the ship came to rest with her forward end in the shallower waters upslope.

Other remnants of the ship’s equipment include the lead cores of wooden anchor stocks – 14 of them, thought to be the remains of five individual anchors. These lead cores, which represent the earliest examples of this type of anchor, were also recently published by Ken Trethewey in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology.  One of the two largest anchors was comprised of four lead bars, lying in a row, with small pieces of the original wooden stock still attached.  Plant pathologist Bob Blanchette of the University of Minnesota, who has agreed to study the many small wood fragments from Tektaş Burnu, has identified the remains of the wooden anchor stock as elm.

In the last week of the 2001 excavation season, as the project drew to a close, we located a second four-cored anchor stock under a meter of sand in 175’ of water at the base of the shelf on which the wreck sits.  The find tells us something about how the ship came to grief, because it suggests that the anchor had been cast out in an initial attempt to keep the ship off the rocky coast.  When the sea floor proved to be deeper than the anchor line was long, the ship undoubtedly began to creep toward the rocks.  Perhaps the anchor held long enough to allow the crew to gather their possessions and abandon ship.