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oard among amphoras, kitchen ceramics, and some organic cargo that did not survive,
seems to have been just a small mid-first century A.D. merchantman similar to many others
of its age, suggesting that some ships did not transport stone exclusively. 288
It must also be considered that the survival rate and discovery process of marble
carriers make them a peculiar class of ancient shipwreck. Even though marine borers and
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weathering of the sea erode marble, the rate of decay of submerged stone is relatively slow,
and after two millennia on the seafloor, this kind of material often survives in reasonably
good condition. One consequence of their preservation, the large size and weight of their
cargoes, is that this particular type of site is easily located by sport divers. It is not
coincidental that most of the wrecks reported in Table 18 are located in shallow waters;
while deeper sites undoubtedly exist – the 60-meter deep Mahdia shipwreck, or the Skerki
F site, at 765 m of depth, for instance – SCUBA divers are mostly active at depths less than
50 meters.
As opposed to amphora carriers, the enormous weight of stone cargoes should help
preserve these sites from the destructive action of looters, even though smaller, portable
artifacts are occasionally removed from their original context. It is likely that looters
visited the Punta Scifo A and B shipwrecks on many occasions, and even if they were
unable to raise marble blocks and column shafts, they may well have removed artifacts
they were able to lift to the surface. 289 It is reasonable to assume most of the assemblages in
shallow waters are incomplete, even though they may not appear so.
288 McCann and Oleson 2004, 99-101.
289 The statuette of Eros and Psyche was indeed found by local fishermen.