Dr Ioannis Nakas

“For we are in a certain sense amphibious/ἀμφίβιοι γὰρ τρόπον τινά ἐσμεν”. Ships, harbours and networks in the seas of Greece during the Roman period

The region of Greece has always been a place in which the sea inevitably played a vital role in the life of its inhabitants, which largely depended on networks of interaction, trade, and travel to sell and buy goods and to exchange and expand knowledge and technology with their neighbouring forelends. In such networks the coastline and especially harbours would become essential interfaces and commercial knots. And that was the case in the Roman Aegean, in which the cultural, financial, and political unification that had began in the Hellenistic period, was concluded and the pax romana ensured stability and safety. Many harbours and coastal cities became great centres of commerce and shipping, equipped with grandiose monuments and all the necessary infrastructures to serve the increasing volume of commerce, travellers, pilgrims, and merchants.

In order, however, to better understand the function of the Roman harbours of the Aegean one has to keep in mind that every harbour’s main mission is to accommodate and serve ships, their cargoes, and their crews and its development largely depends on such an ability and on the practical issues related with it: size, orientation, depth, natural protection from the sea, sedimentation, and the existence or not of harbour works, always considered vis-à-vis the form, size, and technology of contemporary ships, as well as of political and financial conditions within the wider Roman empire. This presentation focuses on the author’s recent studies on the use of harbours of the Aegean and the Ionian seas by ships and the implications of their natural and anthropogenic configuration in their development into commercial and urban centres.

Ioannis Nakas was born in 1977 in Ioannina, where he grew up and got his BA in archaeology. He continued his studies in Southampton, UK, where he obtained an MA in maritime archaeology, specialising in medieval galleys. He then worked for many years as a contracted archaeologist for the Greek Ministry of Culture, at the same time developing his talent and skills as an illustrator of archaeological finds, architecture, as well as of graphical reconstructions of ancient monuments. Building upon his experience on ancient ships and seamanship and his participation in several excavations of ancient harbours in Greece (Zea, Lechaiοn, Delos), he proceeded in obtaining a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK, focusing on the use and development of the Hellenistic and Roman harbours of Delos and Kenchreai and the practical implication of ship and cargo handling within them. The thesis was published by BAR.  Ioannis Nakas is currently an early career research fellow at the Centre of Hellenic Studies of the university of Harvard, studying Roman harbours of Epirus, as well as a research partner in the ERC project “Ships in Harbours” at the university of Haifa, where he is working on the documentation of the use of harbours by vernacular ships of the Aegean between 1850 and 1950 through photographic archives. His interests include, apart from Hellenistic and Roman harbours and ships, transport amphorae, fortifications, as well as the Early Iron Age seafaring. He lives and works in Athens.