1,900-year-old branded designer lamps found in shipwreck

A Greek-U.S. team of marine archaeologists has located three ancient shipwrecks with pottery cargoes, including 1,900-year-old branded designer lamps, in a rich graveyard of ships in the eastern Aegean. The wrecks were found off Fourni island in notoriously treacherous waters between the larger islands of Ikaria and Samos. Two of its 13 islets bear the ominous name Anthropofas, or Man-eater, in reference to the seamen who drowned off them.

Older wrecks date to the 4th and 2nd centuries B.C. and the 5th-6th centuries A.D. Apart from the cargoes of amphorae — jars that contained wine, oil and foodstuffs, divers also recovered a group of 2nd-century A.D. terracotta lamps, incised with the names of the Corinthian artisans who made them, Octavius and Lucius.