Özet:

Underwater Archaeology first started to gain public attention with the discovery of shipwrecks carrying works of art in the early-20th century, although the scientific value of the field truly became apparent with the excavation of the Gelidonya Wreck in 1960. Since that time, the number of underwater archaeological researches has increased steadily in number, and these studies have left their mark on the history of maritime activity on the Anatolian peninsula with the discovery of, for example, the Uluburun wreck and the Antalya wreck. Underwater archaeological researches in Turkey were concentrated on the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts for many years, expanding to the Marmara Sea only in the 1980s. The Marmara Sea was a significant source of food for the settlements established around it in the Neolithic Period, and the period following the first millennium BC is particularly important in maritime history, when many new cities were established on its shores during the colonization movements. While the maritime history of the Marmara Sea is still largely shrouded in mystery, the abundance of shipwrecks dating back to the Late-Roman and Byzantine periods point to an increase in maritime activity in the Marmara Sea at the time, when it was host to the capital of the East Roman Empire. There is, however, a lack of knowledge of earlier periods, but this may be attributed to the scarcity of studies conducted to date. The focus of the present study is the Marmara Sea and the important position it has held in every period due to its geopolitical location. Although the Yenikapı Excavations are considered underwater archaeology in terms of the foundling group, they were excluded from this study due to the difference in the adopted technical approaches.

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