Shipsheds Of The Ancient Mediterranean

This is the first detailed and comprehensive study of the shipsheds which were a defining symbol of naval power in the ancient Mediterranean.

This book presents the archaeological discoveries from Dana Island, off the coast of Rough Cilicia in southern Turkey, where underwater investigations and surface survey undertaken in advance of excavation revealed nearly 300 ancient rock-cut slipways, the largest number of such naval installations discovered to date.

Ancient seafaring and especially our fascination with the trireme have fuelled many vooks and debates, many of which are revisited and critiqued here. Alec Tilley takes his lead from the evidence itself, whether depictions on pottery or stone, or literary references, and seeks some semblance of objectivity in a field of research that, he argues, frequently indulges itself in the subjectivity of the evidence. Critiquing previous interpretations of the iconography of seafaring, he looks again at some of the iconography of of the trireme and other warships, discusses the orthodoc trireme debate and especially the Olympias, a recent reconstruction of an Athenian trireme. Along the way he argues that the number in the name of ancient oared ship refered to the number of files of oarsmen, highlighting the fact that many of the ancient artists who depicted ships were knowledgeable about the subject they portrayed, presents thoughts on the development of sailing and draws a series of distinctions between different types of vessels, and reviews the corpus of evidence for seafaring from pre-trireme days to the Phoenicians.

This book uses network ideas to explore how the sea connected communities across the ancient Mediterranean. We look at the complexity of cultural interaction, and the diverse modes of maritime mobility through which people and objects moved. It will be of interest to Mediterranean specialists, ancient historians, and maritime archaeologists.

In this book, prominent historians apply Mediterranean paradigms to Classical Mediterranean Antiquty (Greece and Rome), allowing for a new approach to the ancient world and enhancing antiquity's relevance to the understanding of other historical periods as well as our contemporary world. This book was previously published as a special issue of the journal Mediterranean Historical Review.