Under the Mediterranean (Session 1, Part 2): Honor Frost, Harbours, Stone Anchors and the Tropis Symposia

Recorded in October 2017 at the University of Cyprus, this second half of the opening session of the Honor Frost Foundation conference gathers five papers reflecting on Honor Frost and her fields of study in Mediterranean maritime archaeology.

Jean-Yves Empereur opens with Frost's work on the Pharos of Alexandria. After Kamal Abu el-Sadat located the submerged ruins in 1961, UNESCO commissioned Frost in 1968 to assess the site. Despite rough seas and few dives, she produced an accurate plan and drawings of colossal statues, crowns and sphinxes, publishing them in 1975. When Empereur began excavating in 1994, Frost returned in 1995 to help identify monuments buried under modern concrete blocks, work now continued through 3D photogrammetry.

David Blackman reminisces about his 1964 coastal survey in southern Turkey, cut short when Turkish forces massed for a threatened invasion of Cyprus, and his long editorial collaboration with Frost alongside figures such as Joan du Plat Taylor and Gerhard Kapitän. Turning to harbour research, he discusses geological sea-level indicators, ancient slipways, and the transmission of dockyard architecture from Roman and Byzantine naval bases to Islamic darsana facilities and thirteenth-century Mediterranean arsenals.

Gregory Votruba presents a quantitative study of seafaring and ships focusing on stone anchors, combining a database of 536 published examples with full-scale pulling trials in Urla, Izmir. Reconstructed single-hole limestone anchors generate resistance equal to roughly half their weight, whereas adding wooden arms to three-holed anchors doubles their holding power. Votruba charts morphology and chronology across the Mediterranean and Red Sea. For the Late Bronze Age, he contrasts the Levantine single-hole tradition with the trapezoidal three-holed stone anchors concentrated around Cyprus, notably at Kition, Hala Sultan Tekke and Maroni, often bearing Cypro-Minoan signs, alongside a seventh-century BC Cypriot jug showing a sailor deploying an anchor and a stone anchor and stock from Bamboula at Kition.

Lucy Blue reads a paper by Harry Tzalas on the ten Tropis symposia on ship construction held between 1985 and 2008, including the meeting in Ayia Napa. Tzalas recounts how building the Kyrenia II replica of the Kyrenia shipwreck with Michael Katzev, Susan Katzev and Richard Steffy raised practical questions about shell-first hulls, square sails and steering oars that prompted the first Piraeus meeting.

Finally, Elpida Hadjidaki recalls three decades of friendship with Frost and her excavations at the fortified kothon harbour of Phalasarna in western Crete, the Classical amphora wreck off Alonissos where Frost dived daily, and the Middle Minoan wreck off Pseira.