Marble head (left) and base (right) f
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On Sunday, the team announced initial findings from its most recent survey, which ran from May 23 to June 15 and exposed an entirely new section of the wreck. “The 2022 field research included the relocation of selected sizeable natural boulders that had partially covered the shipwreck area during an event that is under investigation, weighing up to 8.5 tons each; their removal gave access to a formerly unexplored part of the shipwreck,” said the researchers in a blog post.“The exact position and the archaeological context of each finding have been precisely documented during excavation,” added the team, with an aim “to precisely reconstruct the disposition of the wreckage and the conditions of the sinking of the ship sometime during the first half of the 1st century BC.” Perhaps the most striking artifact recovered is a larger-than-life-size marble head, presumed to represent the mythological Greek hero Herakles (Hercules), which probably belongs to a headless statue that was brought to the surface by sponge divers in 1900. The expedition also emphasized the value of two human teeth found in the wreckage, which researchers plan to mine for insights about their human sources.
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