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HIGH RESOLUTION GEOPHYSICS OFF DANUBE DELTA-S SHORE LINE FOR THE EVALUATION OF ITS CULTURAL HERITAGE LOAD. CASE STUDY: THE MOUTH OF NEW DUNAVAT PALEO-DISTRIBUTARY

Radu Dimitriu

Abstract

Pontus Euxinus, the Black Sea today, was since ancient time playground of human activities, of which the most important is the trading navigation, whose beginning coincides with the Greek colonization started in the 7th century BC. The colonies and settlements founded along the coast were connected in ancient time mainly by nautical trade routes running along the shores. The case study area is located in the shallow waters of the Black Sea, in front of the sandbank system that today separates the Razelm-Sinoie lacustrine complex from the sea. Archaeological survey carried out along the present northern Black Sea Romanian littoral led to the discovery of numerous spots where sea waves wash ashore every year fragments of ceramics and even wooden parts of ancient and/or medieval ship wrecks, revealing their possible close presence. The special attention given to Gura Portita littoral sector, which corresponds to the mouth of the ancient New Dunavat distributary, was rewarded with the discovery in 2016 of a well-preserved wooden ship wreck of late Roman age, having around 1000 amphorae onboard. The complex geophysical investigation carried out next year led to the production of a high resolution acoustic image of the seabed and of high detail maps of the geomagnetic field. The side-scan sonar mapping gave an improved acoustic image of the GP-A wreck site and also highlighted the presence of numerous artefacts and traces of anthropic origin. The magnetic survey revealed the presence of an impressive number of local magnetic anomalies, one of them perfectly overlapping the GP-A wreckage site. Despite most of the local magnetic anomalies seem to be due to both natural sources (e.g. variations of magnetic minerals content in shallow sediments) and anthropic sources (e.g. ferrous debris accumulated on the seabed following the long-lasting fishing and navigation activity of local population), still there are several local anomalous features that requires further investigations. Special future attention requires some intriguing elongated and orthogonal anomalous features, which could be correlated with anthropic structures (e.g. walls, piers, levee etc.) built in the proximity of the ancient river mouth and today embedded in the sea bottom sediments.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgem2018/1.1/s05.106

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