Byzantine Shipwreck

 The new National Geographic (April 2026) has a very interesting article about a shipwreck recently discovered in the Mediterranean, a Byzantine ship that went down probably in the early eighth century.  Studying the remains of the ship and its contents provided the archaeologists some new insights into economy and trade in the period.

At this time the Roman Empire was alive and well (just ask, and the emperors would have told you), though the emperors lived in Constantinople (modern Istanbul), in the region of Byzantium (now part of Turkey), rather than in Rome.  The culture that had once embraced the entire Mediterranean basin—which the Romans had nicknamed the Roman lake—had been disrupted by the rise of Islam in the seventh century.  But eastern and western halves of the old Empire were still in communication with each other, and their versions of Christianity had not yet split.

The shipwreck was found off the coast of Croatia, where violent storms can suddenly come up on an apparently clear day.  Croatia is on the Adriatic, the narrow arm of the Mediterranean that runs up the eastern side of the Italian peninsula, and the archaeologists surmise that the ship was headed to Ravenna, near the top end of the Adriatic.  It never made it.

Ravenna was an imperial city, where the emperors from Constantinople preferred to go when they visited the more western parts of their Roman Empire, rather than Rome itself.  There had been regular trade routes between Constantinople and the Adriatic since the emperors moved to Byzantium in the fourth century, and the evidence of the ship shows that even the rise of Islam had not ended that trade.

The ship was carrying a number of amphorae, the big two-handled ceramic pots used to hold wine, olive oil, or sometimes grain.  Such amphorae are found in every wreck of a ship from antiquity in the Mediterranean.  There were also such miscellany as game pieces for checkers, oil lamps, dice, and a millstone.  But what startled the archaeologists was the golden treasure that had been silted over on the sea floor during the last 1300 years. They found Byzantine coins, jewelry, and several matching sets of big golden belt buckles and accompanying belt ends, all highly decorated and some set with precious stones.  (The Geographic has good photos.)

Someone traveling on the ship who owned all that gold would have been stunningly wealthy.  It wasn't the emperor (we'd know about it if it a Byzantine emperor had been drowned), but he (or they) must have had a connection to the imperial court, perhaps as an ambassador.  It's in fact unlikely that one man owned all the buckle/belt-end sets and liked to swap them off on different outfits on different days to show off.  More likely they were intended to be part of a diplomatic mission, to be bestowed as rich gifts to those who went along with Byzantium's requests.

The finding of the wrecked ship indicates that Mediterranean commerce did not die in the seventh century with the rise of Islam, as was once thought.  Some of the objects the underwater archaeologists have found suggest the ship may have made stops along the Muslim-held north African coast before sailing up the Adriatic.  Finds like these can also flesh out our knowledge of a period for which few written records remain.

 © C. Dale Brittain 2026

For more on medieval commerce, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages. Also available in paperback