#archaeology

Underwater archaeologists have recovered a Bronze Age sword from Lake Mezzano, a volcanic crater lake about 60 miles northwest of Rome, and its blade is still sharp, according to Italy's Superintendence of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the Province of Viterbo and Southern Etruria, as reported by Gizmodo and Vice. The team, working with the Carabinieri underwater unit of Rome, dates it to the 13th century BCE.

Divers also brought up axes, arrowheads, daggers, spearheads, pins, a bronze razor and intact ceramic vases. It is the third sword found at the lake since the 1970s. The superintendency says a pile-dwelling (stilt) settlement very likely stood there in the Bronze Age. Why the sword ended up in the water isn't known; Vice reports two theories: it belonged to a high-status person (it lay beside the razor), or it was a ritual offering to water deities.

A shipwreck in shallow water off Kekova, west of Antalya, Turkey, may be the oldest in the world, writes Karin Sowada of Macquarie University in The Conversation, republished by ScienceDaily. The team, led by Hakan Öniz of Akdeniz University, tentatively dates it to around 2700 to 2400 BCE based on its pottery cargo. The previous record holder, off Dokos in Greece, is about 4,200 years old.

Nothing of the ship's timber remains. Divers spent four months freeing large two-handled storage jars, many with a raised clay "belt," from a barnacle-covered slope. Some may come from Jordan Valley clays, and their contents could be products such as olive oil, wine or resin.

The findings are preliminary and have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal; Sowada says earlier or later dates remain possible.