Justin Leidwanger
I am an Associate Professor in Stanford's Department of Classics and faculty at the Stanford Archaeology Center. Beyond Stanford, I am a Fellow of the Penn Cultural Heritage Center, a Consulting Scholar of the Mediterranean Section at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and Affiliated Faculty of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology. My work focuses on Mediterranean mobilities, maritime communities, and systems of exchange. Shipwrecks and port sites, especially in southeast Sicily and southwest Turkey, are central to exploring these themes in the field, providing evidence for connections and the long-term dynamics of communities situated amid the economically, socially, and politically changing worlds from the rise of Rome through late antiquity.
Between 2013 and 2019, I led investigations of the early 6th-century “church wreck” at Marzamemi (Sicily), which sank while carrying nearly 100 tons of marble architectural elements. Work continues through underwater survey, 3D analysis, and publication as well as immersive heritage initiatives in the local Museum of the Sea and associated pop-up exhibits and dive trails. Project 'U Mari extends this collaborative field research in southeast Sicily, interrogating the heritage of diverse but co-dependent interactions with and across the sea that have long defined the central Mediterranean and offer a resource for deeper engagement with the past and sustainable future development. Building on survey since 2017, the project’s newest work examines socioeconomic dynamics spanning 2500 years of tuna fishing through maritime landscape archaeology and documentation of fading material culture and traditional knowledge of the mattanza. Our efforts simultaneously foreground heritage activism through community-based archaeology of the spaces, materialities, and memories of contemporary journeys of forced and undocumented migration across the central Mediterranean.
At Stanford, I teach courses and advise students on topics in Hellenistic, Roman, and late antique archaeology, economies and interaction, port networks, ceramic production and exchange, and Greco-Roman architecture and engineering. My lab at the Archaeology Center serves as a fieldwork base and resource for digital modeling (structured light scanning, laser scanning, photogrammetry, GIS, network analysis) and pottery analysis (petrography, pXRF, computational morphological analysis). One of my current projects, a book-length study titled "Fluid Technologies: Standardization, Efficiency, and the Roman Maritime Economy," arises from various threads of this research with students in the field, lab, and museum, analyzing transport amphoras, port infrastructure, and other clues to ancient technologies of distribution.
Address: OFFICE:
Department of Classics
450 Serra Mall, Main Quad
Building 110
Stanford, CA 94305-2145
LAB:
Archaeology Center
488 Escondido Mall
Building 500, MC 2170
Stanford, CA 94305-2145
Between 2013 and 2019, I led investigations of the early 6th-century “church wreck” at Marzamemi (Sicily), which sank while carrying nearly 100 tons of marble architectural elements. Work continues through underwater survey, 3D analysis, and publication as well as immersive heritage initiatives in the local Museum of the Sea and associated pop-up exhibits and dive trails. Project 'U Mari extends this collaborative field research in southeast Sicily, interrogating the heritage of diverse but co-dependent interactions with and across the sea that have long defined the central Mediterranean and offer a resource for deeper engagement with the past and sustainable future development. Building on survey since 2017, the project’s newest work examines socioeconomic dynamics spanning 2500 years of tuna fishing through maritime landscape archaeology and documentation of fading material culture and traditional knowledge of the mattanza. Our efforts simultaneously foreground heritage activism through community-based archaeology of the spaces, materialities, and memories of contemporary journeys of forced and undocumented migration across the central Mediterranean.
At Stanford, I teach courses and advise students on topics in Hellenistic, Roman, and late antique archaeology, economies and interaction, port networks, ceramic production and exchange, and Greco-Roman architecture and engineering. My lab at the Archaeology Center serves as a fieldwork base and resource for digital modeling (structured light scanning, laser scanning, photogrammetry, GIS, network analysis) and pottery analysis (petrography, pXRF, computational morphological analysis). One of my current projects, a book-length study titled "Fluid Technologies: Standardization, Efficiency, and the Roman Maritime Economy," arises from various threads of this research with students in the field, lab, and museum, analyzing transport amphoras, port infrastructure, and other clues to ancient technologies of distribution.
Address: OFFICE:
Department of Classics
450 Serra Mall, Main Quad
Building 110
Stanford, CA 94305-2145
LAB:
Archaeology Center
488 Escondido Mall
Building 500, MC 2170
Stanford, CA 94305-2145
less
InterestsView All (78)
Uploads
Recent Work by Justin Leidwanger
Between 2013 and 2019, collaborative survey and excavation were carried out on the sixth-century CE shipwreck at Marzamemi, in southeast Sicily, originally explored by Gerhard Kapitän in the 1960s. The vessel sank while carrying a primary cargo of nearly 100 tons of extensively prefabricated architectural materials, at least some intended for a church. New finds raise questions about the prevailing narrative of the wreck as em-blematic of a stagnating Late Antique economy, revived only briefly by Justinian. Large but uneven numbers of worked stone elements complicate assumptions regarding their employment as a single set, while additional decorative materials suggest networks of artistry and agency that transcend a single journey. A smaller secondary cargo of am-phoras, along with galley wares and other finds, reveals the extended commercial webs of this merchant vessel and its sailors. Considered together, the assemblage highlights the interdependence and blurring of boundaries between high-end and more mundane exchange. This report offers a new reading of the well-known Late Antique wreck and a more nuanced evaluation of the goods, people, and processes that tied together the Mediterranean during a transformative period toward the end of the Roman empire era. 1
That seafaring was fundamental to Roman prosperity in the eastern Mediterranean is beyond doubt, but a tendency by scholars to focus on the grandest long-distance movements between major cities has obscured the finer and varied contours of maritime interaction. This book offers a nuanced archaeological analysis of maritime economy and connectivity in the Roman east. Drawing together maritime landscape studies and network analysis, Roman Seas takes a bottom-up view of the diverse socioeconomic conditions and seafaring logistics that generated multiple structures and scales of interaction. The material record of shipwrecks and ports along a vital corridor from the southeast Aegean across the northeast Mediterranean provides a case study of regional exchange and communication based on routine sails between simple coastal harbors. Rather than a single well-integrated and persistent Mediterranean network, multiple discrete and evolving regional and interregional systems emerge.
This analysis sheds light on the cadence of economic life along the coast, the development of market institutions, and the regional continuities that underpinned integration-despite imperial fragmentation-between the second century BCE and the seventh century CE. Roman Seas advances a new approach to the synthesis of shipwreck and other maritime archaeological and historical economic data, as well as a path through the stark dichotomies -- either big commercial voyages or small-scale cabotage -- that inform most paradigms of Roman connectivity and trade. The result is a unique perspective on ancient Mediterranean trade, seafaring, cultural interaction, and coastal life.
Books & Edited Volumes by Justin Leidwanger
Articles & Book Chapters by Justin Leidwanger
Initially explored by pioneering underwater archaeologist Gerhard Kapitän in the 1960s, the famous 6th-c. AD ‘church wreck’ at Marzamemi (Sicily)—with its cargo of prefabricated religious architectural elements—holds a special place in discussions of the ancient stone transport and late antique exchange. Renewed investigations aim to shed light on the broader socioeconomic and historical circumstances surrounding the shipment, including patterns of maritime connectivity between the divergent east and west and the possible roles of imperial agency and local patronage in ambitious architectural programs. Critical to these questions are the origin and destination for the cargo. Stable isotope analysis offers a window into the geographic range of resources available for this architectural program and, by extension, possible clues to the organization of materials, labor, and sponsorship. Analysis of the historical and architectural context allows evaluation of plausible destinations. This study opens new possibilities for interpreting the social and political world of 6th-century exchange and a re-evaluation of the multifaceted relationship between Justinian and the recently acquired imperial lands.
All references to the authors’ workshop papers in the text denote their oral presentations at the ‘Networks of Maritime Connectivity in the Ancient Mediterranean’ workshop held at the University of Toronto in November 2013.
Between 2013 and 2019, collaborative survey and excavation were carried out on the sixth-century CE shipwreck at Marzamemi, in southeast Sicily, originally explored by Gerhard Kapitän in the 1960s. The vessel sank while carrying a primary cargo of nearly 100 tons of extensively prefabricated architectural materials, at least some intended for a church. New finds raise questions about the prevailing narrative of the wreck as em-blematic of a stagnating Late Antique economy, revived only briefly by Justinian. Large but uneven numbers of worked stone elements complicate assumptions regarding their employment as a single set, while additional decorative materials suggest networks of artistry and agency that transcend a single journey. A smaller secondary cargo of am-phoras, along with galley wares and other finds, reveals the extended commercial webs of this merchant vessel and its sailors. Considered together, the assemblage highlights the interdependence and blurring of boundaries between high-end and more mundane exchange. This report offers a new reading of the well-known Late Antique wreck and a more nuanced evaluation of the goods, people, and processes that tied together the Mediterranean during a transformative period toward the end of the Roman empire era. 1
That seafaring was fundamental to Roman prosperity in the eastern Mediterranean is beyond doubt, but a tendency by scholars to focus on the grandest long-distance movements between major cities has obscured the finer and varied contours of maritime interaction. This book offers a nuanced archaeological analysis of maritime economy and connectivity in the Roman east. Drawing together maritime landscape studies and network analysis, Roman Seas takes a bottom-up view of the diverse socioeconomic conditions and seafaring logistics that generated multiple structures and scales of interaction. The material record of shipwrecks and ports along a vital corridor from the southeast Aegean across the northeast Mediterranean provides a case study of regional exchange and communication based on routine sails between simple coastal harbors. Rather than a single well-integrated and persistent Mediterranean network, multiple discrete and evolving regional and interregional systems emerge.
This analysis sheds light on the cadence of economic life along the coast, the development of market institutions, and the regional continuities that underpinned integration-despite imperial fragmentation-between the second century BCE and the seventh century CE. Roman Seas advances a new approach to the synthesis of shipwreck and other maritime archaeological and historical economic data, as well as a path through the stark dichotomies -- either big commercial voyages or small-scale cabotage -- that inform most paradigms of Roman connectivity and trade. The result is a unique perspective on ancient Mediterranean trade, seafaring, cultural interaction, and coastal life.
Initially explored by pioneering underwater archaeologist Gerhard Kapitän in the 1960s, the famous 6th-c. AD ‘church wreck’ at Marzamemi (Sicily)—with its cargo of prefabricated religious architectural elements—holds a special place in discussions of the ancient stone transport and late antique exchange. Renewed investigations aim to shed light on the broader socioeconomic and historical circumstances surrounding the shipment, including patterns of maritime connectivity between the divergent east and west and the possible roles of imperial agency and local patronage in ambitious architectural programs. Critical to these questions are the origin and destination for the cargo. Stable isotope analysis offers a window into the geographic range of resources available for this architectural program and, by extension, possible clues to the organization of materials, labor, and sponsorship. Analysis of the historical and architectural context allows evaluation of plausible destinations. This study opens new possibilities for interpreting the social and political world of 6th-century exchange and a re-evaluation of the multifaceted relationship between Justinian and the recently acquired imperial lands.
All references to the authors’ workshop papers in the text denote their oral presentations at the ‘Networks of Maritime Connectivity in the Ancient Mediterranean’ workshop held at the University of Toronto in November 2013.
New investigations of the famous Marzamemi II ‘church wreck’—originally brought to scholarly and public attention in the 1960s—began in 2013 as part of an overall collaborative initiative combining survey and excavation with heritage management and museum development off the southeast coast of Sicily. Dating around the early 6th-century AD and carrying a monumental cargo of partially prefabricated religious and decorative architectural elements, the shipwreck was almost certainly lost while en route for a building program in the late antique west. Annual fieldwork campaigns over the past four years have shed new light on the major architectural assemblage, while revealing details of additional cargo components, shipboard items, and traces of the hull itself. The following contribution presents results of the 2016 fieldwork and synthesizes new finds with those of earlier reports in this journal (see Leidwanger and Bruno 2014, Leidwanger and Tusa 2015, 2016).
Since 2013, the Marzamemi Maritime Heritage Project has focused its efforts on the famous 6th-century AD Marzamemi II ‘church wreck’ off the southeast coast of Sicily. Initially discovered more than a half-century ago and explored by pioneering underwater archaeologist Gerhard Kapitän, this vessel was carrying a large cargo of pre-fabricated architectural elements intended to decorate the interior of one or more structures somewhere in the late antique west. Building on 2013 field season report, published in volume 10 of this journal (Leidwanger and Bruno 2014), the following account summarizes the results of the 2014 summer field season at Marzamemi, the current state of analysis and interpretation, and plans for future work on the wreck assemblage.
Through its evolving fortunes and dynamic maritime landscape—including continued use and expansion of its facilities even as the civic body relocated to Knidos—Burgaz offers a long-term perspective on maritime networks and raises crucial questions about the socioeconomic rationale for the location of port development and shipping routes in antiquity. What social, political, environmental or other motivations are behind the relocation of network hubs, and how do such events unfold with respect to differing positions within Mediterranean connectivity? What drove residents in the fertile center of the Datça peninsula to expand their maritime horizon by capitalizing on rich lands, raw materials, and ceramic production rather than resigning themselves to oblivion once deprived of their earlier civic, religious, and military centrality? How do the technology, design, and utilization of facilities shift with new economic opportunities and broadening maritime horizons? The growing appreciation of harbors as active agents in the construction of multifaceted networks—“nodes of density in the matrix of connectivity” (Horden & Purcell 2000)—offers the chance to look outward at the intersection of one dynamic maritime landscape with broader developments in the connections that set the rhythm of Mediterranean cultural life. The historical, geographical and archaeological setting makes Burgaz one such ideal lens through which to explore Mediterranean connectivity and shifting centers of maritime activity concurrent with regional sociopolitical, economic and technological development, maritime network internationalism, as well as catastrophic and gradual local environmental pressure.
Using Cyprus as a case study, the approach adopted here explores the possible role of maritime networks in daily life, particularly beyond the island’s larger harbor hubs. A GIS-based analysis of maritime and terrestrial topography explores the spatial patterning of settlements and ports, providing a clearer picture of how dense maritime facilities and ease of mobility on and around the island created a low threshold for seaborne connectivity. Rather than relying on the nearest major harbor city, populations outside coastal urban centers enjoyed proximity and easy access to some form of simple port or beach-side anchorage, allowing the sea to play a dynamic role in the forging of links and socioeconomic life more generally across much of the island. The maritime networks that developed were dense but hardly universal or uniform, forming distinct but overlapping scales of regional and interregional activity that reflect the diverse needs of different communities, the complex movements of goods and people, and the varied agents involved.
In 2013 a team from Brock University and Stanford University focused on recording and excavation in and around two of the site’s four harbors: Harbor 1 (L1), believed to be associated with the earliest habitation phases of the site, and Harbor 2 (L2) where built moles and towers may have served a defensive purpose. Limited marine geophysical survey and coring was undertaken for the assessment of chronological phases of the harbor environment with respect to sea level change, as well as environmental reconstruction and the identification of abrupt events. Excavation in the harbors reveals construction built upon piled rubble, designed to create a level surface for the blocks of the moles. Such leveling techniques are not uncommon in harbor construction throughout the eastern Mediterranean, and are also seen on land sites nearby where pebble and rubble foundations served for earthquake protection. Investigations in L2 this year centered not only on archaeology, but also on current and future heritage management in light of increased tourism in the area.
In light of the Convention’s entry into force but the remaining uneven situation regarding UCH research and preservation initiatives, this panel brings together archaeologists, scientists, policy experts, and legal specialists to address threats to UCH in national and international waters and the degree of protection provided by the Convention and other law. Participants will explore the current state of UCH protection and the benefits and limitations of the Convention for the implementation of ‘best practices’ in the management of submerged heritage. Emphasis is placed on UCH management in North America and the Mediterranean region."