News - Weekly Report 4: Great News!!

Fig. 1 Team work - setting up the site

Fig. 2 Ioannis Triantafillidis introduces the electronic survey set up to Mette Arenfeldt

Fig. 3 Teaching the teachers – Mette Schaldemose lectures to our visitors

Fig. 4 Inspired by the greatness of the Athenian naval installations

Fig. 5 Eva Mortensen

Author: Bjørn Loven Mette Schaldemose and Eva Mortensen

By mid week our crew was finally complete. Mads Moeller Nielsen was back in the water after a week of illness, and two restless days on the jetty waiting for his ears to pop. Mette Schaldemose is also back on the site, after having had other work assignments, such as catching up on the find registration during the past weeks etc. (fig. 1).

Charles Pochin brought three surface supply systems last week, which were taken into use this Wednesday. This means that the diver doesn’t have to carry a tank – instead he or she breaths air from a long hose connected to tanks on land. Furthermore, the electronic survey was initiated and Mette Arenfeldt had her first course in total-station surveying (fig. 2).

A group of lectures from the University of Sydney, Australia visited the site. Mette Schaldemose lectured on our work at the project HQ (fig. 3), and the visitors were then shown around the site. Here, Charles Pochin and Vassilis Tsiaris also gave them a hands on demonstration of our equipment.

This week brought great results. We have discovered a ramp and remains of the foundations of its superstructure, and we now have solid proof of a 140 m long section of shipsheds, thus accounting for a little more than twenty percent of Zea’s fleet capacity in the 4th century (42 out of 196 shipshed units). In the 5th century BC up to twenty-one shipsheds lined this shore line – we have now found identifiable and probable remains of eighteen of these.

The sun is still shining here in the Piraeus, and Niels Bargfeldt was inspired after documenting our great findings in the sea (fig. 4).

Eva Mortensen (fig. 5) reports
This week has been really intense. The new suit finally arrived and it is exactly my size, which makes it much more comfortable to dive. So while Mette Arenfeldt was being taught how to use the total station I was in the water diving more than ever. I had my first tank change this Monday, and by Wednesday I had my first day with two dives per day. The tank change is a bit frightening the first time you try it because of the fact that you cannot breathe while it is going on. It probably feels like it is taking longer time than it really does, but the guys on land know what they are doing, which is reassuring. This week I worked in the same spot, so every day I was continuing my work from the day before. It gave me a rather good idea of what is going on in exactly that area and because of this I think that the work I’ve been doing has been more efficient. The fact that we have found new shipshed structures is also rewarding.