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The first international archaeological mission under the aegis of Unesco completed yesterday, Saturday, its exploration in the Banc des Esquerquis, between Tunisia and Sicily, in the Mediterranean Sea. It was a question of mapping, which was a success, an area concealing ancient and more contemporary remains.
These are rock, sand and coral bottoms at the entrance to the Sicily Channel. The exploration area, located on the Italian continental shelf, has been documented since the 1980s. American expeditions then reported the presence of wrecks, in particular of Roman ships. We went back to this area to see what condition these wrecks were in that had been documented at the time. », explains the underwater archaeologist, Alison Faynot, at the microphone ofOumeima Nechifrom the Africa editorial staff.
On board the French ship Alfred Merlin, moored at the port of Bizerte in northern Tunisia, scientists from eight Mediterranean countries are proud of this successful collaboration. We had to grope a bit to find the site, continues Alison Faynot, “ we recover coordinates but there are differences in technology, … the point we had to look for it a little bit”, and ultimately the satisfaction of seeing the images of these treasures appear. ” It’s quite magical to see the amphoras reappear, the first images of amphoras that appear, blocks of stone, this kind of images, shafts of columns, the cargo in fact of an ancient ship. And that was a very nice moment to have this moment of sharing also with other people who are looking at the same image at the same time. »
Eight countries from both shores of the Mediterranean are involved in this exploration under the 2001 UNESCO Convention, on underwater heritage: Algeria, Croatia, Egypt, Spain, France, Italy, Morocco and Tunisia as the coordinating State.
These benches of Skerki (or the bench of Esquerquis) have been, for several millennia, at the heart of the exchange networks in the Mediterranean, recalls Unesco.