A Byzantine-era ship discovered more than a decade ago on the seabed off Croatia's southern coast was probably carrying a high-ranking person and his entourage, judging by the gold jewellery found in the wreckage, according to archaeologists.
Announcing for the first time on Thursday the results of their years-long underwater excavation, they said the shipwreck could be dated to the 7th or 8th century and that the artefacts on board indicated that this was no ordinary merchant vessel.
These included gold coins dating to the Heraclius dynasty of four emperors, buckles decorated with rubies, emeralds and pearls, and a golden signet ring with a picture of the emperor "that certainly wouldn't be worn by just anyone", Pavle Dugonjic, head of the Department of Underwater Archaeology at the Croatian Conservation Institute, told Reuters.
His team, equipped with diving gear, has spent the past decade slowly uncovering the history of the ship, whose wreckage lies near the Adriatic island of Mljet.
"This is an impressive amount of gold, the largest ever found on a shipwreck in the entire Mediterranean," said Igor Miholjek, the head of research at the Croatian Conservation Institute. "It weighs over 600 grams when weighed after cleaning and restoration."
The Byzantine Empire — successor to the Roman Empire and centred on Constantinople, now Istanbul in Turkey — once dominated the eastern Mediterranean but by the early 8th century was mired in turmoil and was losing territory.
"For me, it's the most important shipwreck of its period," said Justin Leidwanger, professor of archaeology at Stanford University.
"If you're studying the end of the late Roman Empire and the transformation into the medieval world, this is a critical site for us to understand and to gain insights into how the Mediterranean was held together by its sea routes, how it fragmented, how the empire fell apart."
