Bronze Age shipwreck snails from Turkey: first direct evidence for oversea carriage of land snails in antiquity

Thirty-six shells of terrestrial gastropods were discoveredin underwater archaeological excavations of a Late Bronze Age(3,300 years BP) shipwreck at Uluburun, southern Turkey. Fourshells were not related to the wreck and belonged to local speciesfrom the nearby coast. The other 32 specimens were accidentallytransported with the merchant ship, which had sunk when sailingin a counterclockwise route from the Syro-Palestinian coastvia Cyprus to the Aegean and then to Egypt. The Near Easternendemic Xerocrassa langloisiana and the common eastern Mediterraneansynanthrope Xeropicta krynickii were found in amphoras originallycontaining terebinth resin, destined for Egypt. The combinedranges of the two species and the morphological record pointto a narrow area near the Dead Sea, more than 50 km distantfrom the Mediterranean coast, as the harvesting locality ofthe resin. A second group of land snails, partly determinedas Xp. krynickii, must have been on board the vessel under differentcircumstances, attached to spiny bushes used to cushion theheavy freight and to prevent the planks from being damaged.The finds provide direct evidence that land snails have beencarried on ships for more than 3,000 years, and underline assumptionsthat human-based oversea dispersal of anthropochorous speciesin the Mediterranean has occurred since antiquity. The resultsalso show how much can be done if we possess a detailed faunisticknowledge of species distributions and shell morphology. (Received 11 September 2007; accepted 6 November 2007)