Ancient Asine. [Handout/Culture Ministry]
A Swedish-Greek underwater survey off a Mycenaean acropolis in the Peloponnese made famous by Nobel Prize-winning poet George Seferis is producing new insights on harbour-building techniques following rising sea levels in late antiquity.
A Culture Ministry statement Wednesday said last year’s research at Asine, near Tolo in the Argolid, concentrated on structures standing on a large, man-made sunken platform discovered in recent years in relatively shallow waters under the acropolis.
Attempts to date the roughly square structures by pottery found between the stones were inconclusive, but the ministry said they seem to post-date the apparently Roman-era platform that was probably a breakwater. With the passage of time and the rise in sea levels, this became submerged.
The square structures were likely the foundations of later piers built on the submerged breakwater to allow continued use of the harbor structures, the ministry said. It’s believed that the stones were originally contained in wooden crates that rotted away, leaving the stones in rough piles.
Asine was inhabited from the 6th millennium BC – when the acropolis hill was probably an island – through Mycenaean times, when its Cyclopean defensive walls were built, and most of antiquity until the 5th century AD. During World War II it was fortified by occupying Italian troops who destroyed many of the building remains.
Excavations were began by Swedish archaeologists in 1922 following an initiative by Swedish Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf, who explored the site in 1920. A visit by Seferis in 1938 resulted in “The King of Asine,” one of his best-known poems.
The underwater survey was carried out in late September and early October 2025, as a collaboration between the ministry and the Swedish Institute at Athens and Stockholm University, with participants from the University of Gothenburg and the company Nordic Maritime Group.
The five-year project started in October 2023, and aims to investigate the underwater structures with a view to relating them to the settlements on land.
