16th International Symposium on Boat & Ship Archaeology

69 Zadar, Croatia | 26 September – 1 October 2021 Mateusz Polakowski 1 , Pat Tanner 1 , Giulia Boetto 2 , Vincent Dumas 2 , Pierre Poveda 2 , Henri Bernard-Maugiron 3 & Gilles Chaumat 3 1 University of Southampton, UK 2 Aix-Marseille University, CNRS, Centre Camille Jullian, Aix-en-Provence, France 3 Arc-Nucléart, Grenoble, France Past and Present of the Marsala Punic Ship: From construction to exhibition The Marsala Punic Ship, dating to the 3 rd century BCE, is one of the few excavated shipwrecks that provides information about Punic shipbuilding techniques. Exca- vated by Honor Frost between 1971-4, conserved with PEG between 1975-8, it is currently housed in the Regional Archaeological Museum Lilibeo in Marsala. In 2018, a new collaborative project supported by the Museum and the Honor Frost Foundation (HFF) assembled ship archaeologists from the Centre Camille Jullian (Aix Marseille University, CNRS) and the University of Southampton with conser- vators from the Arc-Nucléart restoration laboratory of Grenoble (France). The project goals were to assess the ship’s state of conservation using a Faro Focus5 (S-series) laser scanner and photogrammetry in combination with physio-chem- ical analyses. Examination of archival data in connection with the ongoing HFF Trinacria Sounding Project (TSP) was used to compare the ship’s current shape to earlier interpretations. The digital documentation of the ship before an inter- vention begins will assist in the formulation of a conservation strategy including a better supporting the Punic Ship structure and help the museum create en- gaging public displays. This paper presents the recent work conducted to revisit, reframe, and reinterpret the archaeological remains of the Marsala Punic Ship.