SARANDA, Albania, Once Europe's most forbidding coast, this sparkling stretch of the Ionian Sea is slowly revealing lost treasures that date back 2,500 years and shipwrecks from ancient times.

Over the past two summers, a research ship carrying U.S. and Albanian experts has combed the waters off southern Albania, using scanning equipment and submersible robots to seek ancient wrecks. In what organizers say is the first archeological survey of Albania's seabed, at least five sites were located, which could fill in blanks on ancient shipbuilding techniques.

The project would not have been even imaginable just 18 years ago, when the small Balkan country was still ruled by Communists who banned contact with the outside world. The brutal regime pockmarked the countryside with more than 700,000 bunkers, against a foreign invasion that never came. Instead, the Communists were toppled after a student-led revolt in 1990, which opened Albania to the world.

``Albania is a tremendous untapped (archeological) resource,' said U.S. archeologist Jeffrey G. Royal from the Key West, Fla.-based RPM Nautical Foundation, a non-profit group leading the underwater survey. ``With what we've discovered until now we may say that Albania is on a par with Italy and Greece.'

The latest expedition has revealed traces of four sunken Greek ships dating from the sixth to the third centuries BC, while another three suspected sites have still to be verified. In comparison, the 2007 season netted signs of just one ancient wreck.

``The discoveries are very important because of the lack of properly documented objects from that period,' said Andrej Gaspari, a leading Slovenian underwater archeologist who was not involved in the project. ``The only ships found and documented from that time belong to the western Mediterranean and Israel ... so our knowledge on the technology used for construction of ships is more or less limited.'

During ancient times, Albania stood on an important trade route, receiving traffic from Greece, Italy, north Africa and the western Mediterranean. That history shows in what Albanian mission co-ordinator Auron Tare called ``a real underwater treasure trove' discovered during the six-week season that ended in August 2008.

A 51-centimetre-long pottery jar, or amphora, used to transport wine and olive oil, and a smaller version found about 80 metres deep were probably made in the southern Greek city of Corinth, in the sixth or early fifth centuries BC. Both were recovered from a merchant ship that sank about three kilometres off shore. Albanian archeologist Adrian Anastasi said if the sixth-century BC dating is confirmed, it would be only the fifth of its kind found in the world.

Other highlights included a fourth-century BC amphora and roof tiles, a north African jar from the first to third centuries AD and a Roman stone ship's anchor of the second-first century BC. The team, operating off the southern port city of Saranda, also located more than 20 unknown 20th-century shipwrecks.

Anastasi said what was unique in the 2008 season was the discovery of the fired clay tiles, which appeared to be part of an entire sunken shipload.

``A wreck with a whole shipload of tiles has never been found before,' Anastasi said. ``The number of tiles and the way they were lying clearly shows the ship is below them.'

Anastasi said he had unearthed the same type of large tiles, which measure 74 by 51 inches, during excavations on land at the ruins of ancient cities in western Albania. He said the ship seemed to have been loaded on the nearby Greek island of Corfu and possibly foundered on its way to a Corinthian colony in Albania.

To protect the wrecks from looting, the team is keeping their precise sites secret.

``I'd say if all the material we discovered was excavated you would need a new museum to put it in,' said mission leader George Robb. ``We've scanned only 84 square miles (217 square kilometres) until now.'

Over the next five years, RPM and the Texas-based Institute of Nautical Archaeology plan to scan the whole 354-kilometre shore from the southern border with Greece to Montenegro in the north. Each day of work costs an estimated $25,000, covered by RPM funds.

Once the scanning project is finished, RPM and the INA will discuss the prospect of properly excavating the wrecks using robot submarines and divers, Tare said.

On the Net:

http://www.rpmnautical.org/albaniasurvey08.htm
The Canadian Press