Cape Gelidonya

Coordinates: 36°11′36″N 30°24′11″E / 36.19333°N 30.40306°E / 36.19333; 30.40306
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Gelidonya Lighthouse

Cape Gelidonya (

Latin: Chelidonium promontorium[1]), formerly Kilidonia or Killidonia is a cape or headland on the Teke Peninsula in the chain of Taurus Mountains, located on the southern coast of Anatolia between the Gulf of Antalya and the Bay of Finike
.

During the classical Greek and Hellenistic eras, it was called Chelidonia (meaning swallows), and a group of five small islands, as Chelidoniai nesoi (Swallow Islands, now Beşadalar Adasi). In

Chelidoniae Insulae.[2]

Bronze Age shipwreck

The cape is the site of a late

George F. Bass, Joan du Plat Taylor and Frédéric Dumas. Among the finds were Mycenaean pottery, scrape copper, copper and tin
ingots, and merchant weights.

Discovery and excavation

The eccentric photojournalist Peter Throckmorton, out of New York, arrived there in the mid-1950s after a controversial campaign where he was profiling the Algerian War from the point of view of the Algerian rebels fighting against French troops, which would later lead to an alleged altercation between himself and another team member, Claude Duthuit, who was fighting with the French. Throckmorton arrived in the small city of Bodrum in the southwest of Turkey, built on the ancient city of Halicarnassus, where the remnants of one of the ancient wonders of the world, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, can still be seen today. He had received word that a bronze statue of the Greek goddess Demeter was pulled up by fishing nets and left on the beach, but by the time he had arrived the statue was taken and would eventually find a home in the Museum of İzmir, north of Bodrum.

Throckmorton came to know Captain Kemal of the Mandlinci, a

Explorers' Club, with filmmaker Stan Waterman
among others, including Honor Frost. They set out to visit a number of underwater archaeological sites and finally arrived at Cape Gelidonya, where they spent most of their time trying to identify the site. Finally, on the last day, they located the site on one of the small islands off the Cape.

Throckmorton convinced the

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology to sponsor an excavation of the site, while Frost convinced Joan du Plat Taylor to be a co-director with whoever Throckmorton found. At this time, the young archaeologist George Bass was working on his PhD at the University and was sent to co-direct the archaeological excavation of the site. Neither co-director had completed a diving qualification before they arrived but Bass had some practice in a YMCA pool and knew how to swim. He was also much younger than Taylor, who was well-known and respected within the archaeological community.[5]
The group of divers arrived in 1960 and began to complete the first archaeological excavation of an underwater shipwreck in its entirety, though divers still find missed artefacts on occasion. The British side of the expedition is generally written out of history because most of the funding came from America.

This was the oldest known shipwreck at the time, only being surpassed by the discovery of the

nautical archaeology, along with the excavation of the Viking Skuldelev ships at Roskilde in 1962, and the discovery and raising of the Swedish warship the Vasa
in 1961.

See also

References

  1. ^ Livy xxxiii. 41.
  2. ^ A Gazetteer of the World: Or, Dictionary of Geographical Knowledge. Vol. 4. 1859. p. 520. Retrieved January 12, 2015.
  3. ^ Sarah P. Morris, Daidalos and the origins of Greek art, Princeton University Press (19952), p.103.
  4. ISBN 0-19-987360-7
    .
  5. ^ Hirschfeld, Nicolle. "Joan Mabel Frederica du Plat Taylor, 1906–1983" (PDF). Breaking Ground: Women in Old World Archeology. Brown University. Retrieved April 24, 2020.

External links

36°11′36″N 30°24′11″E / 36.19333°N 30.40306°E / 36.19333; 30.40306

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cape_Gelidonya&oldid=1194691975"