Excavation Work at the Shipwrecks

Among the thousands of artifacts unearthed in the Yenikapı Excavations, 37 shipwrecks are considered as the world’s largest medieval shipwreck collection and provides priceless information about Byzantine Period seamanship, maritime trade and ship building technology. Dimensional greatness of excavation area, at the same time being found world’s largest medieval shipwreck

Continue reading

In Situ Documentation

Experts from Istanbul Archaeological Museums excavated and delivered the shipwrecks which were protected with a tent system that was equipped with a spray watering system to keep the ships wet. After creating suitable conditions to work, the shipwrecks were studied with detailed cleaning and documentation phases. In all these phases,

Continue reading

Lifting the Shipwrecks

Lifting procedure of the wooden pieces that forms the ships was applied after completing documentation work on the field. To be able to determine building techniques and construction details of the ships with separating members without joint details, also consolidate all members during conservation and impregnate conservation material, it was

Continue reading

Post-Excavation Documentation

Full scale drawings after excavations are very important for determining ship building techniques, but more importantly for reconstruction work. As a traditional way of documenting shipwrecks in laboratories drawings with colored permanent pencils on acetate have been practiced on a glass plate over the timbers. The main thing here is

Continue reading

Conservation StudyWork

Yenikapı Shipwrecks found inside the sediment brought by the Lykos Creek and totally protected compared to many shipwrecks which were excavated underwater. However, it is not possible to display or store waterlogged ship timbers without conservation and restoration. Due to biological activity, ship timbers situated underground for more than a

Continue reading

Building Techniques of The Yenikapı Shipwrecks

Yenikapı shipwrecks made a unique contribution to our knowledge of ship building technology and development. Research carried out on the shipwrecks by Istanbul University’s ship experts reveals, from traditional shell based to skeleton based building methods and a transition period that is mixed building technique that contains both periods’ features. 

Continue reading

Genus Species Identification of Timbers

Genus-Species identification is very important for determining the geography of the place where the ships were manufactured, detecting wood types used in different parts of the ship and spotting latest repairs of the ships. These analyses were carried out by Prof. Dr. Ünal Akkemik the Head of the Forest Botany

Continue reading

Analyses

Chemical Analyses: During the time shipwrecks spent underwater and later on under the sediment, some chemicals built up in their tissues. Especially when woods stocked up of the sulphur on harbor floors directly affects the conservation process in the future. For this reason sulphur levels of wood samples of all

Continue reading

Reconstruction

]It is planned to make reconstructions of some shipwrecks in the name of experimental archaeology within Istanbul University Yenikapı Shipwrecks Project. Yenikapı 12 is going to be the first ship to be built using original material and the building technique of the period. Yenikapı 12 is a small merchant vessel

Continue reading

Yenikapı 12 Ortaçağ Gemisinin Rekonstrüksiyonu

Yenikapı 12 batığı, 2007 yılında, Marmara kıyısındaki önemli Bizans Limanlarından biri olan Theodosius Limanı’ndaki kazı çalışmaları sırasında keşfedilmiştir (Res. 1). Batık üzerindeki belgeleme çalışmaları, kazı alanındaki gövdenin bütünlüğü bozulmadan yapılan in situ kayıtlar ve İstanbul Üniversitesi Yenikapı Batıkları Araştırma Merkezinde ayrı ayrı her bir parçanın dokümantasyonu olmak üzere iki ana

Continue reading