From the 16th century onwards, hundreds of Greek and Roman sculptures have been discovered in the Mediterranean Sea, both from shipwrecks and isolated finds. This material constitutes some of the strongest evidence for studying the maritime transport of sculpture in antiquity. Yet, despite the large number of underwater sculptural finds, their early discovery and long period of study, most researchers of the ancient Mediterranean have so far analysed those artefacts primarily from an art historical perspective. The interpretation of their maritime transportation has largely remained conjectural, due to the incomplete recording and the remoteness of their underwater findspots.

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