A 2,300-year-old wreck off Croatia held Greek fine pottery and sailors’ scratched names

About six metres of timber hull, a coin from ancient Pharos and a set of black-glazed drinking cups have come out of Gnjilna Bay on the Croatian island of Vis. Croatia’s Conservation Institute (Hrvatski restauratorski zavod, HRZ) announced the findings on October 4, describing a merchant ship from the 4th or 3rd century BCE.

The institute calls it the first identified shipwreck with finds of Greek fine pottery. Several of those vessels carry short scratched markings that researchers read as abbreviated personal names, which makes the wreck unusual: it preserves what appear to be the belongings of the crew alongside whatever the ship was hauling.

A hull, an anchor and a coin fix the date

The announcement, as reported by Arkeonews on October 11, rests on archaeological investigations carried out between 2023 and 2025 in Gnjilna Bay, near the town of Komiža. Jurica Bezak of the institute’s Department of Underwater Archaeology leads the work, and archaeologists cooperated with diving centres around Vis. The site first became known through a small number of fragments of Corinthian type B amphorae, the storage jars used for wine and olive oil. Later campaigns brought up parts of the vessel itself, equipment, coins, animal bones and many ceramic objects.

Three kinds of evidence anchor the date. The amphora fragments belong to a type in use in the Hellenistic period, a lead anchor component belongs to the Haldane II A type, and a coin from Pharos, the Greek settlement on the neighbouring island of Hvar, dates to the 4th century BCE. Together they place the sinking roughly 2,300 years ago.

The hull is the part that sets the site apart from a scatter of pots. According to the report, about six metres of wooden structure survive, including part of the keel and attached planking. Wooden components are rarely preserved on wreck sites, and the timbers show how merchant vessels were assembled more than two millennia ago.

Greek fine pottery and the names scratched into it

The ceramics are what the institute emphasises. The finds listed in the report include skyphoi, which are handled drinking cups, kantharoi for drinking wine, askoi for pouring, bowls, plates, salt dishes and small aryballoi used for oil or perfume, along with black-glazed pieces. HRZ describes the site as “the first identified shipwreck with finds of Greek fine pottery,” according to the institute’s own announcement, which Arkeonews cites as its basis. The drinking vessels connect the wreck to Issa, a city founded on Vis in the 4th century BCE and later known for its wine.

Several of the black-coated vessels carry scratched markings that the researchers interpret as abbreviated personal names. The reasoning, as relayed in the report, is simple: “Because someone engraved them after the pottery had been manufactured,” the marks were added by an owner rather than a workshop, so they may be ownership marks. The report suggests that they might point to a crew member of relatively high social standing, and that some vessels were personal property rather than commercial cargo.

That reading is interpretation, not a decipherment. The coverage does not publish the letters themselves or say how many vessels are marked, and it describes the owner’s status only as a possibility. The finds, in the report’s words, “offer a rare glimpse into the lives of sailors during the Hellenistic period.”

What earlier research says about the cargo and the trade

Gnjilna Bay was already in the scholarly literature before the 2026 announcement. A 2022 study by Maja Miše and Patrick Sean Quinn of University College London, published in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, analysed 248 amphora sherds from 15 sites in the Dalmatian region, including production sites, consumption sites and shipwrecks. The authors describe a “merchant ship that sank near the southern cape of the island of Vis,” which carried Corinthian A′ and Corinthian type B amphorae. Nine sherds from the site entered the sample.

The result that matters for the new find is chemical. Using petrographic and geochemical analysis, the authors found that the A′ and B amphorae at Gnjilna were produced in the same workshop, which they argue sheds new light on how the Corinthian types were made. They also caution that separating Corinth from Corfu as the source of type B is difficult without sampling in the field. The full paper is available from UCL, and the Arkeonews report ties the cargo to the Greek trade centres of Issa on Vis and Pharos on Hvar.

A caution on identification applies as well. In July 2025 Arkeonews reported a 4th-century BCE Greek merchant ship off Komiža on Vis, lying at 30 to 50 metres and spotted in 2023, with Bezak as lead archaeologist. That article never names Gnjilna Bay, so the reports do not establish whether the two describe the same site. Its description of fine pottery, personal items and a lead-plated hull section is similar to the 2026 account, but no source read for this article confirms the link.

Several basic questions remain open in the available coverage: the vessel’s size, the depth of the site, the full inventory of marked vessels and whether any of the names can be matched to known people of Issa. The Arkeonews report and the HRZ announcement it cites are the only accounts of the 2023 to 2025 campaigns, and neither is a peer-reviewed publication of the excavation.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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