16th International Symposium on Boat & Ship Archaeology

75 Zadar, Croatia | 26 September – 1 October 2021 Dušanka Romanović 1 , Katarina Batur 2 , Irena Radić Rossi 2 & Nikola Budimir 3 1 Archaeological Museum Zadar, Zadar, Croatia 2 University of Zadar, Department of Archaeology, Zadar, Croatia 3 Via Kornel 3Design and prototype development studio, Rijeka, Croatia Reinterpretation of the third sewn boat from the ancient port of Zaton in the vicinity of ancient Nin ( Aenona ), Croatia The port of Zaton in the vicinity of the city of Nin, Croatia, was an ancient port of the municipium Aenona, in the province of Dalmatia. Intense port activity was recorded from the middle of the 1 st century until the end of the 3 rd century AD. It appears that it tapered off, ceasing about the beginning to the mid-4 th century AD. The remains of a large breakwater are visible in the marine environment. At the inner (eastern) side of this structure, three sewn boats were probably scuttled, and left in shallow waters. The research campaigns in 1966 and 1982 resulted in the discovery of the boats Zaton 1 and 2. The boats were recovered in 1979 and 1987. As the hull remains were not recorded in situ , the data crucial to their inter- pretation was irretrievably lost. This presentation deals with the boat Zaton 3, which still lies on the seabed. It was discovered in 2002, when it was cleaned and recorded within the capabil- ities of the team present at the site. Through joint efforts of the Archaeological Museum Zadar and the University of Zadar, the site was revisited in September 2019. The boat was found in a good state of preservation, with a length of 6.5 m and an almost entirely preserved keel. The paper presents the construction fea- tures of the hull, encompassing the massive keelson/mast step, with mortise to accommodate the mast. The 2019 excavation campaign supplemented documentation from the earlier research, and yielded reinterpretation of the hull remains. Considering the six thoroughly recorded sewn boats from Classical Antiquity in Istria and Dalmatia (one in Poreč, two in Pula and three in Caska), the third sewn boat from Zaton pro- vides additional knowledge on the construction and sewing techniques used in the Adriatic at the beginning of the first millennium. It is particularly noteworthy that the Histrian and Liburnian prehistoric shipbuilding techniques survived well into the period when mortise-and-tenon built ships sailed the Adriatic.