The Roman wreck ofc. AD 200 at Plemmirio, near Siracusa (Sicily): second interim report: The domestic assemblage 1: medical equipment and pottery lamps

Abstract

A Roman wreck, Plemmirio B, lies in 22–47 m depth off the southern (Plemmirio) cliffs of Penisola della Maddalena, 5 km south of the Great Harbour (Porto Grande) of siracusa, Sicily (Figs 1, 2). The wreck was first seen in 1953, and was discovered anew by a University of Bristol expedition in 1974. Investigations at the site are now complete, after a programme of intensive survey and excavation by teams from the Universities of Bristol (1983) and Cambridge (1985, 1987). An interim report, based on work carried out to the end of the 1983 campaign, has been published (Gibbins & Parker, 1986); the present paper is the first of several reports to contain interim discussion of results from the 1985 and 1987 seasons. The Plemmirio B ship was transporting a small cargo of iron bars and North African cylindrical amphoras, and is a type-site for a group of 20 wrecks indicative of the first major phase of amphora export from Africa Proconsularis about the time of the Emperor Septimius Severus (AD 193–211). The first part of this paper contains a brief description of research objectives and methodology at Plemmirio, and a preliminary outline of 1985 and 1987 findings. Concentration in the second part is on two categories of artefacts among the assemblage of domestic objects from the ship's galley and living area. A unique discovery on an ancient wreck was a collection of medical equipment, probably part of a surgeon's instrumentarium; this material comprised two bronze scalpel handles with blunt dissectors, a bronze scalpel handle combined with an iron cautery or cataract needle (?), and a possible wooden ‘bandaging stick’. Four pottery lamps, one stamped on the base IVNDRA, an abbreviation of the maker's name, are also of exceptional interest. All are of a general form datable elsewhere to the Severan period; two can be provenanced to North Africa and two to central Tyrrhenian Italy, a pattern which is reflected in other domestic pottery from the wreck and is further evidence of the ship's movement between the ports of Africa Proconsularis and Rome[1].