What is the world's oldest shipwreck and how was it found off Turkey?

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1. 1

   ULUBURUN – THE DISCOVERY AND EXCAVATION OF THE WORLD’S OLDEST KNOWN SHIPWRECK

   Akroterion (Fawcett & Zietsman)Published Mar 30, 2012Checked Oct 14, 2026

   “The oldest and most exciting shipwreck ever discovered is that of a 15 metre Syro-Palestinian trading vessel whose cargo was sighted on the sea-bed by a sponge diver off a promontory called Uluburun, near Kas, on the south Turkish coast. The ship dates from about 1300 BC. According to Wachsmann (1998:xi) “The Uluburun shipwreck is without doubt the single most significant key to understanding Bronze Age seafaring”, and Bass (1998:49) adds that “few if any Bronze Age excavations in the past 50 years have been more important than the Uluburun shipwreck.””

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   Uluburun shipwreck (Wikipedia)

   WikipediaPublished Oct 14, 2026Checked Oct 14, 2026

   “The Uluburun Shipwreck is a Late Bronze Age shipwreck dated to the late 14th century BC, discovered close to the east shore of Uluburun (Grand Cape), Turkey, in the Mediterranean Sea. The shipwreck was discovered in the summer of 1982 by Mehmed Çakir, a local sponge diver from Yalıkavak, a village near Bodrum. Eleven consecutive campaigns of three to four months' duration took place from 1984 to 1994 totaling 22,413 dives, revealing one of the most spectacular Late Bronze Age assemblages to have emerged from the Mediterranean Sea.”

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   Tin from Uluburun shipwreck shows small-scale commodity exchange fueled continental tin supply across Late Bronze Age Eurasia.

   Science advances (Powell et al.)Published Nov 30, 2022Checked Oct 14, 2026

   “This paper provides the first comprehensive sourcing analysis of the tin ingots carried by the well-known Late Bronze Age shipwreck found off the Turkish coast at Uluburun (ca. 1320 BCE). Using lead isotope, trace element, and tin isotope analyses, this study demonstrates that ores from Central Asia (Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) were used to produce one-third of the Uluburun tin ingots. The remaining two-thirds were derived from the Taurus Mountains of Turkey, namely, from stream tin and residual low-grade mineralization remaining after extensive exploitation in the Early Bronze Age. The results of our metallurgical analysis, along with archaeological and textual data, illustrate that a culturally diverse, multiregional, and multivector system underpinned Eurasian tin exchange during the Late Bronze Age. The demonstrable scale of this connectivity reveals a vast and disparate network that relied as much on the participation of small regional communities as on supposedly hegemonic institutions of large, centralized states.”

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   Shipwrecks

   Research paper (Bachhuber)Published Nov 29, 2019Checked Oct 14, 2026

   “This chapter focuses on Late Bronze Age (LBA) and Early Iron Age (EIA) shipwrecks in the eastern Mediterranean and other deposits on the seafloor that may or may not have been associated with a sunken ship. It locates the archaeology of such sites within the larger paradigm of Mediterranean archaeology. Far and away the largest contribution that research on Bronze Age shipwrecks and seafaring deposits have made to Mediterranean archaeology is as evidence for long distance trade and communications. Following the Cape Gelidonya excavations, six underwater LBA and EIA sites associated with shipwrecks or large seafaring deposits have been subject to investigation: four date to the LBA (Uluburun, Hishuley, Cape Gelidonya, Point Iria, and Modi) and two to the EIA (Tanit and Elissa). The chapter assesses the material culture of these sites, and the impact it has had on both the specialized fields of maritime or nautical archaeology, and the larger paradigm of Mediterranean archaeology.”