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Document Type: | Article |
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All Authors / Contributors: | F W Welter-Schultes Affiliation: Institut für Zoologie und Anthropologie der Universität, Berliner Str. 28, D-37073, Göttingen, Germany |
ISSN: | 0305-4403 |
Language Note: | English |
Unique Identifier: | 4933100976 |
Awards: |
Abstract:
Land snails recovered from shipwreck excavations can potentially provide information regarding human-based dispersal of the involved species and also contribute to hypotheses regarding a ship's route and geographical origins of some of its cargo. Such faunal material, however, must be subjected to critical study to ascertain whether they represent specimens originally associated with the ship itself or are simply elements introduced to the site after the ship sank. The excavation of a Late Bronze Age shipwreck at Uluburun, in southern Turkey, produced 36 land snails. Of these, 32 specimens are believed to have been on board the vessel in antiquity. Three other specimens represent an endemic Metafruticicola species, which lives exclusively in a 10 km zone in the region of Uluburun. The proximity of the species' habitat to the shipwreck site suggests that these specimens are intrusive elements. The intrusive nature of a single Zonites specimen also recovered from the excavation is amply demonstrated by a detailed comparative study of Zonites specimens collected in the same locality. The last study, which involves the analysis of spatial shell variations of populations collected from 61 separate localities (totalling 367 specimens) within a 50 km area extending from Megisti (Kastelórizo) and Kas to Finike, suggests that: (1) Zonites beydaglariensis is conspecific with Z. caricus , and (2) the shipwreck specimen not only belongs to this species, but that it originates from a population on the rocky Uluburun peninsula 0·8-1·2 km north of the shipwreck site. The specimen was probably blown into the sea by a natural phenomenon and settled on the shipwreck site.
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