The Dor D Shipwreck & Holy Land Wine Trade

In October 1999 a joint Anglo-Israeli team excavated the 6th-century AD Dor D shipwreck, which is located at the southern end of the Carmel Mountain range in Israel, about 13 kilometres north of Caesarea. The site was first recorded in 1991 by Kurt Raveh and Sean Kingsley during a survey and lies about 30 metres offshore in the southern anchorage of the ancient city of Dor. The 1999 fieldwork was co-directed by Dr Sean Kingsley (Wreck Watch Int./Somerville College, University of Oxford), Dr Ya’acov Kahanov (Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies, University of Haifa), Chris Brandon (Nautical Archaeology Society, Portsmouth) and Kurt Raveh (Dor Maritime Archaeology Project, Israel). 

The Dor D shipwreck can be defined as partly coherent only in reference to its continuous ballast spread, which sealed limited hull remains. The cargo, domestic assemblage and wooden planking are mainly scattered. The surface manifestations of the wreck are composed of 346 amorphous ballast blocks, which, when fully exposed, covered an area of 10.6 x 8.3 metres. Although there is no structural evidence for overall length and beam dimensions, this vessel was clearly medium-sized and an estimate of 15 metres in length may be proposed. 

 

The primary orientation of the ship’s timbers is east-west. This is an unusual pattern, given that incoming wave direction usually caused ships recorded off Israel to founder parallel to the shoreline. The Dor D timber orientation suggests that the ship’s captain may have deliberately attempted to beach his vessel to maximise chances of saving crew and cargo. A model for such an operation is provided by a historical reference to the loss of the English navy’s ship the Zebra during a storm off Palestine in December 1840, when, “After every exertion on the part of her officers and crew to save this vessel… it was found advisable to hoist a sail on the stump of the bowsprit and direct her end on to the sandy beach. She was lifted on to it, high and dry, on the crest of the wave… the operation being performed with all the silence, regularity and precision of an ordinary manoeuvre.” 

Similar to most other ancient shipwrecks recorded off Israel, no intact amphoras were encountered on the Dor D wreck. This expectation was taken into consideration in the research design, which implemented a total sherd recovery policy in order to maximise study of the pottery (wedged in crevices between ballast blocks) and thus permit quantification of the amphoras and domestic assemblage in an attempt to produce statistics for the original cargo composition. 

On the basis of ship construction techniques recorded in 1991, a 6th-century AD date was proposed for the shipwreck. This was complemented by a radio-carbon reading obtained by the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, adjusted to AD 539-621. Subsequent study of the amphoras suggests a date for the shipwreck in the last quarter of the 6th century AD. 

 

 

Typological and petrological analyses of 749 amphora fragments associated with the ship (15 rims, 22 handles, 19 bases and 693 body sherds), and identified as cargo, indicate a provenance between Ashkelon and Gaza in southern Palestine. Elongated LR4 amphorae accounted for 7% of all the cargo amphorae; bag-shaped LR5 types, also from southern Israel, represent 89% of the total; 4% are unclassified. 

Significant stylistic and clay fabric variation has been identified amongst this material, most notably for the LR5 bag-shaped amphorae: in addition to three distinct rim sub-forms, five clay fabrics were recorded, indicative of manufacture in different workshops and not at a single source. The presence of an LR5 amphora with a lead plug sealing its vent hole (designed to prevent carbon dioxide accumulation when full of wine) offers further evidence for amphora re-use. 

Although it is admittedly impossible to estimate the total number of jars transported on Dor D during her final voyage, and to be certain just how representative the available sample is, the combined evidence favours the view that Dor D was not carrying a primary wine cargo when wrecked, but empty jars originating in different parts of southern Palestine. The reconstruction of the itinerary of the ship’s final voyage suggests that Dor D was sailing towards rather than away from Palestine when she foundered. Her ballast is identical to outcrops scattered along the shores of Istanbul, suggesting a starting point for the final voyage at Constantinople, capital of the Late Roman Empire. 

The Dor D ship seems to have been returning empty LR4 and LR5 wine amphorae to Palestine for refill or sale. The suggestion that they had carried wine is based on the pitched linings of all sherds examined and on grape pips embedded in pitch lining the LR5 amphoras. The absence of liquid content and thus the jars’ lightness, and not a need to trim the vessel to maintain sailing efficiency, seems to have determined the necessity for the ship to take the ballast on board. Individual ballast blocks weighed up to 60 kilograms maximum, but had an average weight of 15 kilograms. The 346 ballast stone blocks within the hull thus weighed an estimated 5.2 tons minimum. 

The Dor D shipwreck is a type of site whose formation and archaeological potential remain poorly understood. Several comparable examples characterized by extensive surface ballast heaps, fragmentary pottery and sections of sealed hull have been recorded off Israel, including the Ma’agan Michael wreck of c. 400 BC and four additional early 7th-century AD sites at south Dor. 

Available evidence in the form of 200 shipwrecks identified off Israel at depths of 1-6m indicates that the shallow gradient of the country’s continental shelf results predominantly in poorly preserved sites because shipwrecks were susceptible to the pressures of high-energy wave activity (often in the breaker zone) and salvage from shallow waters. Well-preserved cargoes of the forms prevalent off Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, France and Italy are non-existent. Without sealing layers such as ballast, and rapid, enduring sand coverage post-deposition, most shipwrecks off Israel like the Dor D wreck formed into incoherent, scattered sites. 

S. Kingsley, A Sixth-Century AD Shipwreck off the Carmel Coast, Israel. Dor D and Holy Land Wine Trade (BAR Int. S1065, Oxford, 2002).