Between 2013 and 2019, collaborative survey and excavation were carried out on the sixth-century CE shipwreck at Marzamemi, in southeast Sicily, originally expl...

The central Mediterranean today marks one of the most active and dangerous routes for sea crossings to Europe, due in no small part to border regimes designed to prevent the mobilities that have defined these waters from earliest antiquity. This article considers initial results of fieldwork undertaken to document and make visible the material culture of contemporary vessels used to carry forced and undocumented migrants to southeast Sicily over the past decade. These former fishing craft reveal structural and spatial adaptations to facilitate a different traffic, reflected also in items left behind when the boats were intercepted. Archaeology helps to embed these journeys within long-term frameworks of connectivity and to situate their ephemeral traces alongside more traditional notions of Mediterranean maritime heritage. In a region that celebrates its deep connections to the sea, care for the materiality of these contemporary mobilities foregrounds human experiences, while serving goals of advocacy, empowerment, and social justice amid global change.¹

Recent archaeological studies reveal a growing interest in the relationship between local coastal dynamics and broader currents of Mediterranean seaborne connectivity. Using as a case study the complex harbour site of Burgaz and its maritime landscape of the Datça peninsula in southwest Turkey, this paper considers trajectories of port development in communities that are pre-modern and pre-industrial but increasingly interconnected and interdependent. While the peninsula’s fertile low-lying farmlands made Archaic and early classical Burgaz an economic backbone and centre of regional exchange in the southeast Aegean, the growth of Eastern Mediterranean networks of the late classical and Hellenistic era eventually favoured Knidos as the better situated hub for maritime activity. Building on the influential “Anyport Model” by geographer James Bird (1963, 1971), this article explores patterns of coastal development at Burgaz as a reflection of local responses to intersecting political, economic and environmental factors. By contextualizing the long-term evolution of one dynamic landscape, the model aims to shed light on how ancient Mediterranean port communities negotiated a constantly shifting place within complex and evolving maritime networks.

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