Kas Archaeopark Site

The Kaş Archaeopark lies in Hidayet Bay on the Çukurbağ Peninsula, just outside Kaş harbour, where the Underwater Research Society set up a training site in 2006 for underwater and experimental archaeology. It is not a natural wreck. What sits on the seabed is a full-scale replica of a Late Bronze Age trading ship, laid out alongside a reconstruction of how the real wreck looked when it was found — in effect a purpose-built underwater classroom that recreational divers happen to be able to visit.

The Wreck That Inspired It

The original lies further along the coast, off Uluburun, a headland southeast of Kaş. In 1982 a local sponge diver, Mehmed Çakır, described seeing "metal biscuits with ears" on the seabed; those turned out to be copper oxhide ingots, and the site turned out to be the oldest substantially excavated shipwreck in the world. Tree-ring dating of cedar recovered from the ship places the sinking at around 1320 BC.

The Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M University excavated it over eleven campaigns between 1984 and 1994, first under George Bass and then under Cemal Pulak, logging 22,413 dives on a steep slope running from roughly 44 metres down to 61 metres. The cargo was extraordinary: 354 copper oxhide ingots amounting to about ten tonnes, a further tonne of tin, at least 149 Canaanite jars carrying terebinth resin, some 175 raw glass ingots in cobalt blue, turquoise and lavender, African blackwood logs, hippopotamus and elephant ivory, ostrich eggshells, Baltic amber beads and a gold scarab inscribed with the name of Nefertiti. The hull was cedar of Lebanon, built shell-first with mortise-and-tenon joinery, on a vessel of roughly 15 to 16 metres. The finds are held at the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology.

Building an Underwater Museum

The Uluburun site itself is far too deep for sport diving, and that is precisely the problem the Archaeopark was built to solve. In 2006 a group of non-profit organisations, working with the Underwater Research Society, built a 15 by 5 metre replica hull known as Uluburun III in forty days and sank it in Hidayet Bay loaded with imitation cargo. Beside it they laid out a reconstruction of the wreck as it appeared when it was discovered in 1982, together with a model of the excavation site, using replica material throughout so that nothing on the genuine wreck is disturbed.

The project set itself three aims: training in nautical archaeology, raising public awareness through recreational diving, and research through experimental archaeology. The last of those is not decoration. The replica has been photographed steadily since it went under, producing a long-running record of how a wooden hull decays in Mediterranean water — the sort of data that is otherwise almost impossible to gather. Partner organisations have included the German and British nautical archaeology societies DEGUWA and NAS, and the site is generally described as the first underwater archaeopark of its kind.

Diving the Site

Dives at the Archaeopark reach around 32 metres on the rocky slopes along the eastern side of the bay. The bay also holds seagrass meadows, moray eels and groupers, and a cluster of formations divers have nicknamed "Stonehenge". Because the depth range is broad and the bay is sheltered, it works for training dives and experienced groups alike.

The Archaeopark is one of somewhere between twenty-five and thirty dive sites within twenty or thirty minutes of Kaş harbour, part of the reason the town is routinely described as Turkey's scuba diving capital and supports more than twenty dive centres. The others cover most of what the Turkish coast has to offer: an Italian Second World War aircraft at the site divers call Flying Fish, a Dakota near the lighthouse, walls, a canyon, caves and tunnels, and beds of ancient amphorae. The season runs from roughly April or May into November; water temperatures range from about 16°C in February to around 28°C in mid-August, and visibility commonly sits near 25 metres and can pass 40.

Kaş Above the Waterline

The town itself was ancient Antiphellos, the Lycian port whose name means simply "opposite Phellos" — Phellos being the inland city it served. A small Hellenistic theatre stands about 500 metres west of the modern main square, cut into the slope and facing the sea, with seating for something like 4,000; Lycian rock-cut tombs are set into the cliff wall above the town and are floodlit at night. The Çukurbağ Peninsula that shelters Hidayet Bay curls around the harbour and looks across the water to the Greek island of Kastellorizo.

Many diving groups pair a morning at the Archaeopark with time on the water in the afternoon, and many visitors combine a day of sightseeing with a private gulet charter from Kas to fit in both the dive site and a longer stretch of coastline.