16th International Symposium on Boat & Ship Archaeology

28 16 th International Symposium on Boat & Ship Archaeology Mauro Bondioli 1 , Mariangela Nicolardi 1 & Irena Radić Rossi 2 1 ARS NAUTICA Institute for Maritime Heritage – Italian branch, Venice, Italy 2 University of Zadar, Department of Archaeology, Zadar, Croatia Historical Written Sources on Shipbuilding and the Archaeological Study of a Mediterranean Post-Medieval Shipwreck: the Gagliana grossa case study During the excavation campaigns (2012-2020) conducted on the late 16 th century shipwreck of Gagliana grossa (islet of Gnalić, Croatia), the problems relating to the documentation, interpretation and graphical representation of the hull struc- tural elements were addressed. Being a Renaissance wreck of Venetian origin, it seemed appropriate to combine the archaeological data with iconography, archi- val documents, and contemporary written sources on shipbuilding. The research aimed at understanding the construction techniques, historically contextualizing the architectural design, filling the gaps in the archaeological remains, and, fi- nally, moving towards the reconstruction of the original hull shape. This type of approach has become common in the archaeological studies on medieval and post-medieval shipwrecks of Mediterranean and non-Mediterranean origin. It will certainly evolve in the future, especially in conjunction with the development of 3D graphic technologies. Modern virtual tools help the archaeologist to make the reconstructive hypotheses more attractive, realistic, and credible, but, at the same time, blur ‘the line between fact and fiction.’ The tendency to apply written sources on shipbuilding in archaeological contexts has not yet developed a shared methodology and still requires theoretical assessment, as today archaeological paradigms are still in force. In fact, justifiable doubts about the use of historical sources on shipbuilding in archaeological reconstructive hypotheses were raised in 1976, at the first Symposium held in Greenwich on Sources and Techniques in Boat Archaeology . Furthermore, part of the scientific community remains scep- tical about the legitimacy of recovering the conceptual processes underlying the ship’s design as reconstructed from the archaeological evidence, a kind of psy- cho-archaeological approach that would perhaps best belong to cognitive archae- ology. With regard to these issues, in the framework of the NEREAS Project (IP 2020-02-3420), this paper aims to illustrate the results achieved by the team of experts collaborating in the research of the shipwreck of Gagliana grossa .