Browsing by Author "Campbell, Peter"

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    Chapter 16: the battle of the Aegates Islands, 241 BC: mapping a naval encounter, 2005-2019
    (Oxbow Books, 2021-07) Tusa, Sebastiano; Campbell, Peter; Polakowski, Mateusz; Murray, William; Oliveri, Francesca; Buccellato, Cecilia; Fresina, Adriana; Li Vigni, Valeria
    The Battle of the Aegates Islands is significant as the naval engagement that ended the First Punic War and the only ancient naval battle site that has been located in the archaeological record. The Egadi Islands survey is a collaboration between the Soprintendenza del Mare, RPM Nautical Foundation, and Global Underwater Explorers, surveying an area of 270 km2 with the main concentration of the battle spread over 4 km2 . This chapter provides an overview of the 2005-2019 maritime archaeological survey of the battle site, detailing the 23 bronze warship rams that have been found on site, along with helmets, swords, and cargo. The finds reveal cross-cultural interactions in the mid-3rd century BC, as well as the earliest assemblage of Roman and Carthaginian military equipment.
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    Integrated GPR and laser scanning of Piazza Sant’Anastasia, Rome
    (Archaeopress Archaeology: Oxford, 2023-08-01) Pomar, Elena; Kay, Stephen; Campbell, Peter; Vuković, Kresimir
    The application of non-invasive techniques for archaeological research, in particular geophysical prospection and 3D-modelling, have been at the forefront of the research conducted by the British School at Rome (BSR), in particular at the sites of Portus and San Giovanni in Laterano. The techniques have been used for the investigation of both large-scale sites as well as documenting complex buildings, in many cases as a precursor to archaeological excavations. However, when sites are embedded in a complex urban landscape, non-intrusive methods offer the only possibility for a detailed investigation of the subsurface. The survey at Piazza Sant’ Anastasia falls within this context. The church of Sant’Anastasia and the adjoining piazza occupy an area of great importance in the topography of ancient Rome. Seated between the Palatine and the Aventine hills, the area is adjacent to the Circus Maximus and very close to the Forum Boarium (for the ancient topographical context of the study area, see among others Coarelli 2008). The aim of the survey was to locate archaeological features underneath the piazza with Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) and to record the current layout of the area, dominated by the church façade, with high-resolution 3D laser scanning. The ultimate objective was to combine the data in a shared 3D environment capable of representing the diachronic evolution of the site.
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    Routes
    (Liverpool University Press, 2022-05-15) Campbell, Peter; Vuković, Krešimir
    The waters of the Mediterranean may be the greatest museum of Antiquity. Scattered across the seafloor are shipwrecks from every time period. Cargos of wine, oil, and fish were transported in clay amphoras, which are found stacked in the sands or spilling down submarine cliffs in waterfalls of ceramics. There are also other items: lamps, cooking pots, anchors, and fragments of everyday life. These objects tell human stories, which archaeologists carefully tease out of the material record. It is sometimes possible to identify the ship’s previous ports of call, their home port, or their intended destination. Since the first shipwreck discoveries by early divers, a database of Mediterranean shipwrecks has slowly been built and recreated the paths that the ships navigated. 1 It reveals a ‘globalized’ ancient Mediterranean which spread cargo, languages, religions, war, and ideas. The efflorescence of ship-borne connectivity was possible through the creation and sharing of routes.
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    Shipwreck ecology: understanding the function and processes from microbes to megafauna
    (Oxford University Press, 2023-12-19) Paxton, Avery; McGonigle, Christopher; Damour, Melanie; Holly, Georgia; Caporaso, Alicia; Campbell, Peter; Meyer-Kaiser, Kirstin; Hamden, Leila; Mires, Calvin; Taylor, J. Christopher
    An estimated three million shipwrecks exist worldwide and are recognized as cultural resources and foci of archaeological investigations. Shipwrecks also support ecological resources by providing underwater habitats that can be colonized by diverse organisms ranging from microbes to megafauna. Here, we review the emerging ecological subdiscipline of shipwreck ecology, which aims to understand ecological functions and processes that occur on shipwrecks. We synthesize how shipwrecks create habitat for biota across multiple trophic levels and then describe how fundamental ecological functions and processes, including succession, zonation, connectivity, energy flow, disturbance, and habitat degradation, manifest on shipwrecks. We highlight future directions in shipwreck ecology that are ripe for exploration, placing a particular emphasis on how shipwrecks may serve as experimental networks to address long-standing ecological questions.