2,100-Year-Old Shipwreck Reveals Cicero-Era Tableware

Some 2,100 years ago, a merchant ship loaded with thousands of plates and bowls set out across the Mediterranean and never arrived. Now its cargo is coming back up from the seabed, and it links to a name that appears in one of Cicero’s letters.

A Wreck Full of Dinner Plates

The wreck lies off Adrasan, in the Kumluca district of Antalya on Türkiye’s southern coast, at depths between 42 and 55 meters. Underwater excavations led by Akdeniz University’s Underwater Archaeology Research Center began in 2025, with robotic systems supporting the work at those depths. In the first season alone, teams recovered 6,511 intact ceramic pieces, which were transferred to Antalya Museum, while thousands of additional fragments went to the university’s Conservation and Restoration Laboratory in Kemer. Türkiye’s Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy dived to the site in June 2025 and announced the latest findings on September 28, 2026.

122 Forms of Fine Dining

According to Ersoy, archaeologists have now identified tableware in 122 different forms and sizes, a figure that counts distinct types rather than the total number of pieces. The assemblage includes nut plates, soup bowls, fish plates, and trays in various sizes, which Ersoy said reveal the luxury dining culture of the period. Some of the cargo appears to have come from other production centers as well: the wreck also contained amphorae thought to have been made on Aegean islands, pointing to a mixed shipment moving along established trade routes. Coins from Antioch found aboard help date the wreck to the first century BC.

The Pottery Cicero Wrote About

Most of the tableware is associated with ancient Rhosus, identified with modern Arsuz in Hatay province on the Gulf of İskenderun. Rhosus appears in the written record in an unusual way. Around 50 BC, while serving as governor of Cilicia, the Roman statesman Cicero wrote to his friend Titus Pomponius Atticus and mentioned that he had ordered Rhosica vasa, vessels associated with Rhosus. Scholars have proposed that these may correspond to Eastern Sigillata A, a widely distributed class of fine red-gloss tableware made around the Gulf of İskenderun, though exactly which vessels Cicero meant remains debated. What the Adrasan wreck offers is a physical counterpart to that letter: evidence that workshops in this region were producing tableware on a large scale for export across the Mediterranean.

Packed in Clay

One of the most unusual features of the wreck is how well the cargo survived. Ersoy said merchants packed clay between the vessels inside crates, cushioning the plates and bowls against knocks during the voyage. That same packing helped preserve them after the ship sank, which matters because shipwreck cargoes are often heavily broken and scattered. At Adrasan, many vessels remain complete enough for researchers to reconstruct both their shapes and how they were prepared for shipping, offering something close to a commercial shipment frozen in time.

A Ship Bound for Rome

Researchers believe the ship departed from Rhosus and was likely sailing toward Rome when it struck a shallow area during a storm and sank, according to Turkish reporting on the ministry’s announcement. The finds point to a vessel working a trade route linking the coasts of Antioch, the Aegean, Greece, and Italy in the middle of the first century BC. The Adrasan project is part of a wider program of underwater research along Türkiye’s Mediterranean coast: in 2025 alone, Akdeniz University teams documented ten shipwrecks during surveys off Antalya and Fethiye, while excavation also continued at a much older Middle Bronze Age wreck off Kumluca. Work at Adrasan continues.

Sources

This report draws on the Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s announcement by Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, with additional details from Arkeonews and Anadolu Agency.