Thousands of plates packed in clay lay 180 feet down off Turkey for 2,100 years

In 50 BC, Cicero wrote to his friend Atticus that he had ordered ceramic vessels for him from Rhosus, a port on what is now Türkiye’s eastern Mediterranean coast. Two thousand years later, underwater archaeologists off Adrasan, in Antalya Province, have brought up a cargo of that same tableware from a ship that never reached Rome.

The wreck lies at a depth of between 42 and 55 metres, roughly 138 to 180 feet, so the 180-foot figure marks the deep end of the site. Excavation began in 2025 under Türkiye’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and the findings were announced on September 28, 2026. The ship is dated to about 2,100 years ago.

Thousands of ceramics in 122 shapes

Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said that thousands of artifacts had so far been recovered from the ship, according to Hürriyet Daily News. The word “thousands” is the ministry’s own statement of what has come up so far, and no individual archaeologist or exact tally accompanied the announcement. The pieces come in 122 different forms and sizes of plates, bowls and trays, which Ersoy said “reveal the luxury dining culture of the period.”

The minister described the work to Daily Sabah as bringing 2,100-year-old tableware to the surface from the depths of the Mediterranean. The range of forms is the detail the announcement stressed. Daily Sabah’s report lists fish plates, soup bowls and trays among the types, and Baird Maritime adds nut dishes. A single shipment holding that many shapes shows how specialised the table of a wealthy Roman-era household had become, and why a potter’s output from one Cilician port was worth carrying across the sea.

Clay between the pieces

The tableware was placed inside wooden crates, with clay packed between individual pieces, according to HeritageDaily’s account of the excavation. Baird Maritime says the vessels were nested together and separated by raw clay, which protected them in transit and cushioned the impact when the ship went down, leaving designs “clearly visible” on the recovered pieces.

The packing explains the survival rate. Clay filled the gaps that would otherwise have let plates grind against one another as the hull broke up and settled onto the seabed. Ersoy framed the finds as evidence of “production in Anatolia and trade across the Mediterranean,” in the words carried by Marine Insight.

Coins, amphorae and a route to Rome

The date rests on coins. First-century BC coins from Antioch place the sinking around the middle of that century, in the late Hellenistic to early Roman period, as bianet reported. A coin can show only that a ship sank no earlier than the coin was struck, so the pairing of coins with the tableware’s style and the Cicero reference is what narrows the window to roughly 2,100 years.

The tableware itself is believed to have been made at Rhosus, modern Arsuz in Hatay Province, and amphorae from several Aegean islands were also aboard, pointing to trade links among Antioch, the Aegean, Greece and Italy. Reports describe the ship as likely sailing from Rhosus for Rome when a storm drove it onto a shoal near Adrasan. Cicero’s letter of 50 BC to Atticus, which the Turkish announcement cites, shows why that destination makes sense: Rhosus wares had a reputation in Rome as prestige goods.

The 180-foot and 2,100-year figures

Both numbers in the finding are rounded from ranges. The 42-to-55-metre span converts to about 138 to 180 feet. The sources report the site as a band of depths, not a single reading, and they do not say which parts of the cargo lie at the shallow end and which at the deep end, so 180 feet describes the limit of the working range rather than the typical dive. The age is a rounding of the same kind. A sinking in the middle of the first century BC falls about 2,060 to 2,080 years before 2026, and the reports round that to 2,100 years. Cicero’s reference to Rhosus ware dates to 50 BC, about 2,076 years before the announcement, which is consistent with that window without proving the ship carried the order he placed.

The plate count itself is unpublished: “thousands” covers bowls, fish plates and trays too.

Work continues at the site with underwater robots, and further discoveries are expected. The coverage names the Ministry of Culture and Tourism as the authority behind the dig but no individual field director, so the announcement rests on the minister’s statements rather than on a published excavation report or a peer-reviewed paper. How many of the thousands of pieces are intact, and how many crates remain unopened on the seabed, has not been published.

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

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