Recommendable!
"... To get a fresh perspective from under the sea, researchers launched SHIPs (2023–2028), a multiyear underwater archaeology project combining hands-on fieldwork across the Mediterranean and a major freshwater lake.
By approaching harbors from the water rather than the shore, the project maps the different elements of a port system and examines how they worked together.
They discovered that anchoring areas beyond the formal stone walls played a decisive role in how much traffic a port could handle. Judging a port's capacity by its surviving stone docks alone overlooks the many ships accommodated beyond them.
Ships anchored in sheltered natural bays, were beached along open coastlines or moored in deeper waters beyond the harbor walls. These practices reshaped how researchers view harbor capacity in the ancient harbors of Caesarea, Terracina and Port-Vendres. ..."
From the abstract:
"The SHIPs project examines ancient harbours from a maritime perspective, analysing integrated harbour systems across contrasting environments in the Mediterranean region. Application of standardised analyses demonstrates that extra-basin anchorage zones played a decisive role in determining harbour capacity and enables more robust evaluation and comparative ranking of ancient ports."
Port-Vendres (France): locations of shipwrecks and assemblages.
