ANCIENT HARBORS AND SUBMERGED ISLANDS: NEW EVIDENCE FROM CROTON, ITALY

Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, described a small archipelago of five islands which were visible in the sea of Croton in the first century A.D. He even transcribed their names: “the island of the Dioscuoroi, Calypso's, Tyris, Eranusa, and Meloessa.” (H.N. III 10.95-98). Two of them were still visible in the detailed nautical charts that seafarer and geographer Piri Reis, after having traveled in this area, drew at the court of Suleiman the Magnificent in A.D. 1521-1526. Currently, not only these islands have disappeared, but the entire coastline of Croton appears to have gone through dramatic changes since the Greek and Roman age.

In the summer of 2009, a joint Italian-American expedition has began a systematic project of research in the the shallow waters south of Croton aimed to map all the submerged archaeological evidence present in the coastal area. The recent discovery in the search area of submerged tufa quarries which were in use in the Greek Archaic and Classical Age (sixth-fourth centuries B.C.), can be used to precisely date and quantify the amount of coastline changes that have taken place in the area since antiquity.

Inserting the new data into a GIS, the shape of the ancient coastline of Croton is being reconstructed, and the archaeological material still in situ, whenever present, used to date the inhabitation phases. The possible location of the Graeco-Roman harbor of the city is also being proposed.