ABSTRACT
Shipwrecks are overwhelmingly the most important source of new data for maritime trade in antiquity. Since the end of the Second World War, following the introduction of the aqualung, more than 1,500 wrecked ancient merchantmen have been discovered in the Mediterranean; the number continues to rise inexorably, often by well over 50 a year, as more coastlines become accessible for survey and as new technology allows greater depths to be explored.1 Shipwrecks have several contextual advantages over land sites in which similar materials are found. Wrecks are more likely to preserve organic remains, intact artefacts, and materials in their raw or unfinished state, ranging from metal ingots and glass cullet to roughed-outsarcophagi. A wreck eventis usually accidental, and results in a contemporaneous assemblage of material lost in use; a land site, by contrast, might comprise rubbish selectively discarded over time. A wreck deposit therefore has unusually high resolution and integrity, terms used to ascribe a level of meaning to the associations of material in an assemblage.2 These characteristics mean that a wreck may preserve a uniquely informative instance of trade, and they also allow the evidence of wrecks to be compared and collated in a way which is possible for few other types of archaeological assemblage.
