Overview

Discovered in 1995 by tourists, the shipwreck at Black Assarca Island, Eritrea

Eritrea

Eritrea , officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea derives it's name from the Greek word Erethria, meaning 'red land'. The capital is Asmara. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast...

 was surveyed in 1995 and excavated in 1997 by the Institute of Nautical Archaeology

Institute of Nautical Archaeology

The Institute of Nautical Archaeology is the world’s oldest organization devoted to the study of humanity’s interaction with the sea through the practice of archaeology. INA’s founder Dr. George Bass pioneered the science of underwater excavation in the 1960s through work at Cape Gelidonya and...

 http://www.inadiscover.com under the auspices of the Ministry of Marine Resources of Eritrea. Directed by Ralph K. Pedersen http://ina.tamu.edu/pedersenbio.htm, the expedition partially excavated the shipwreck containing ceramics of Near Eastern/Mediterranean origin. Most notably, the wreck contained amphoras of a type found previously at Aksum, the capital of the Aksumite Kingdom

Aksumite Empire

The Kingdom of Aksum or Axum, also known as the Aksumite Empire, was an important trading nation in northeastern Africa, growing from the proto-Aksumite Iron Age period ca. 4th century BC to achieve prominence by the 1st century AD...

 in what is now Eritrea and Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

; Metara; Adulis

Adulis

Adulis or Aduli is an archeological site in the Northern Red Sea region of Eritrea, about 30 miles south of Massawa. It was the port of the Kingdom of Aksum, located on the coast of the Red Sea. Adulis Bay is named after the port...

, the Aksumite port city located on the west side of Zula Bay; Berenike, the Ptolemaic harbor in Egypt; and at Aqaba

Aqaba

Aqaba is a coastal city in the far south of Jordan, the capital of Aqaba Governorate at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba. Aqaba is strategically important to Jordan as it is the country's only seaport. Aqaba is best known today as a diving and beach resort, but industrial activity remains important...

, Jordan

Jordan

Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...

, where excavations in the 1990s and early 2000s by a team from North Carolina

North Carolina

North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...

 discovered the kilns where some of these amphora

Amphora

An amphora is a type of vase-shaped, usually ceramic container with two handles and a long neck narrower than the body...

 types were fired. These long and conical "carrot shaped" amphoras decorated with corrugations, or rilling, are now called by archaeologists "Ayla-Axum Amphoras

Ayla-Axum Amphoras

These narrow conical amphoras are a type lately called “Ayla-Axum” after the widest range of finds in the Red Sea. The Ayla-Axum amphora has parallels from at least three terrestrial sites in Eritrea and Ethiopia: Aksum, where amphora sherds with gray fabric were found by the Deutsche Aksum...

" after their seemingly maximal distribution points on the Red Sea

Red Sea

The Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. In the north, there is the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez...

, with Ayla/Aila the ancient name for Aqaba.

Other material includes a counter-balance weight for a steelyard

Steelyard balance

A steelyard balance or steelyard is a straight-beam balance with arms of unequal length. It incorporates a counterweight which slides along the calibrated longer arm to counterbalance the load and indicate its weight...

, a piece of glass, and two other amphora types: one a round amphora, and the other a wider version of the conical type. Both of these types share stylistic characteristics with the Ayla-Axum vessels. No hull remains were found in the 1997 excavation season.

As an origin point for the ceramic cargo of transport containers, Aqaba

Aqaba

Aqaba is a coastal city in the far south of Jordan, the capital of Aqaba Governorate at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba. Aqaba is strategically important to Jordan as it is the country's only seaport. Aqaba is best known today as a diving and beach resort, but industrial activity remains important...

 is the obvious choice. Excavations by the Roman Aqaba Project, under the direction of S. Thomas Parker throughout the late 1990s into the 2000s, revealed several thousand sherds of the Ayla-Axum amphora type. The amphora type at Aila first appears in the late fourth/early fifth century and is common through the seventh century. This determination is supported by the early 5th century finds at Berenike.

Located at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba, the ancient port city Aila/Ayla served as the nexus between the products of Palestine

Palestine

Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

 and Jordan and those of the Red Sea-Indian Ocean

Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...

 littoral in the Roman and Byzantine periods. During excavations in the 1980s of the early Islamic settlement Ayla, Archaeologist D. Whitcomb found that the foundations of the earliest Islamic structures were “consistently associated with late Byzantine ceramics.” He discovered the narrow conical amphoras were “common at Aqaba but very rare elsewhere, raising questions as to the stylistic origin and distribution, and more importantly, the reasons for amphora productions at a site with no commercial product except for fish… and dates….” Whitcomb also noted that the amphoras and other ceramics at Aila exhibited stylistic similarities, not with Palestinian or Jordanian types, but with those from Coptic Egypt. The lack of examples at other recorded sites in Palestine, Jordan and the Sinai implies “a strong local tradition” although similar styles have been found by Parker at Wadi Yitm near Aqaba. The amphora published at this time was waster connected with kilns not far from the find site. The ceramic assemblage consisted of red or orange ware with a darker slip, but these also occurred as cream slipped ware, as well as cream ware. The amphora and related ceramics date from the 6th century and into the 7th.

The corpus of material indicates an origin for the ceramics in Byzantine Aila. The dating can only be estimated to the 5th or 6th centuries based on the other finds of similar ceramics at Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Mediterranean sites. It is possible that the wreck could date to the early 7th century as well.

For further information

The Aksumite-Period Shipwreck at Black Assarca Island, Eritrea http://sites.google.com/site/wedigboats/home/black-assarca

"Under the Erythraean Sea: The Shipwreck at Assarca Island, Eritrea" in INA Quarterlyhttp://ina.tamu.edu/quarterly/V27%20Nos2-3.pdf

Pedersen, R.K. 2008. The Byzantine-Aksumite period shipwreck at Black Assarca Island, Eritrea. Azania, XLIII: 77-94