Serçe Limani: An Eleventh-Century Shipwreck Vol. 1, The Ship and Its Anchorage, Crew, and Passengers

Ed Rachal Foundation Nautical Archaeology Series

by George F. Bass, Sheila Matthews, J. Richard Steffy

Serce Limani--or the Glass Wreck--so-called because its cargo included three metric tons of glass cullet, trafficked in both the Byzantine and Islamic worlds of its time. This first volume of the complete site report introduces the discovery, the methods of its excavation, the conservation of its artifacts, and the picture of daily shipboard life that can be drawn from this underwater museum.

592 pages, hardback

First published August 16, 2004

About the author

George Fletcher Bass is recognized as the father of underwater archaeology.

Bass was the director of the first archaeological expedition to entirely excavate an ancient shipwreck: Cape Gelidonva (1960). Since directing his first excavation, he has excavated shipwrecks of the Bronze Age, Classical Age, and the Byzantine. Bass is professor emeritus at Texas A&M University, where he held the George T. and Gladys H. Abell Chair in Nautical Archaeology. He holds an M.A. in Near Eastern Archaeology from The Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1973 Bass founded the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA). INA has conducted some of the most important excavations of the twentieth century, and its findings throw new light into areas as diverse as the beginning of the free enterprise system, the dating of Homer's Odyssey, chronologies of Egyptian dynasties and Helladic cultures, and the histories of technology, economics, music, art and religion.