Archaeology Faculty Spotlight Lecture: “At Home on Board: Kyrenia Ship and the Goods of its Crew”

Lecture by Andrea Berlin, James R. Wiseman Chair in Classical Archaeology, Professor of Archaeology & Religion. Abstract: The Kyrenia ship is the best preserved small Greek merchant ship ever found. Its cargo included 400 amphoras, 45 millstones, iron ingots, nearly 10,000 almonds, a consignment of oak planks and logs - and 109 whole and fragmentary vessels that comprised the goods of the crew. The cargo was of course the point: it's the currency of the seas. The goods of the crew are more like small change: portable and available. But those goods allow us a glimpse of life on board for the ship's crew. In this lecture I present these goods, explain how they allow us to identify the place and date of the ship's port and route as well as the character of the ship's crew - and how the very smallest fragments reveal the ship's surprising "pre-history," before it became a Greek merchantman.