In the realm of science too, there are miraculous hauls, where data emerges as unexpectedly beautiful treasures. This was the fortunate journey to befall an international team of archaeologists working on the origins of the port of Corinth, in Greece. These researchers, who were trying to unearth clues corroborating textual sources that date this port's creation to the seventh century BC, have now proof that it was operational half a millennium before that time. This astonishing result was detailed in an article published in the November issue of Marine Geology.
The Greco-Danish research program called Lechaion Harbour Project (LHP) has been exploring since 2013 the site of Lechaion, where the ancient port of Corinth was located. As explained by Bjorn Loven, an archaeologist at the Danish Institute at Athens and co-author of the study, "Lechaion is located on the isthmus that connects the Peloponnese to the rest of mainland Greece and served as a permanent nexus between land and sea routes." The isthmus, which separates the Saronic Gulf to the east from the Gulf of Corinth to the west, is so narrow that it was considered preferable, according to ancient authors, to transport goods from one shore to the other by land, rather than circumnavigate the Peloponnese by boat. This strategic crossroads did not escape the Romans, who under the Empire made it Greece's most significant port.
While traces of Roman settlements can still be seen in the landscape, there's virtually nothing tangible left of earlier eras. To delve into this distant past, LHP scientists relied on two core samples taken by Antoine Chabrol, a French geoarchaeologist at the Université Paris-Sorbonne and first author of the study. His first surprise, he said, came from the dating: "The dates we received confirmed the Greek port we were trying to understand, but we also saw significantly earlier dates," going as far back as the 12th century BC, the Bronze Age!
Further surprises came to light during the sediment analysis, carried out in France at the technical platform of the Observation et Mesure des Environnements Actuels et Anciens (Observation and Measurement of Current and Ancient Environments), supported by two CNRS laboratories, Archéorient on the one hand and Environnement, Ville, Société (Environment, City, Society) on the other. As explained by Hugo Delile, a researcher at Archéorient and co-author of the study, one of the aims of this analysis was to highlight "an anthropogenic reservoir, trace metal elements that provide information about past human activities."
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