ИСТИНА

For more than a thousand years, Phanagoria was a major transit center on the maritime trade route from the Mediterranean to the Azov Sea. But unlike most ancient ports, Phanagoria did not have a convenient natural harbor, and port facilities had to be built on an open stretch of sea coast. For the construction of an artificial harbor, a lot of building materials are needed. But there are almost no stone deposits on the Taman Peninsula, and the nearest Crimean quarries are source of limestone, which is fragile and poorly suited for sea piers. Nevertheless, 2 massive stone embankments oriented perpendicularly to the shore have been preserved in Phanagoria. This is probably the remains of piers or breakwaters. The size and capacity of these flooded embankments suggest that at least 15000 cubic meters of stones, weighing at least 20000 tons, were used for their construction. In 2019 we extracted 450 stones from the eastern embankment for geological studies. Questions: what are these rocks and where did they come from? Were these stones brought to Phanagoria as ship ballast or building material? Were the piers built at once, or were there several stages of construction? Geological studies still continues, but it is already clear that about 27% of the samples are of volcanic origin from the Mediterranean, and do not belong to the ship's ballast. There is no doubt that a huge amount of building material was brought to Phanagoria for the construction of the harbor, at least partially - on ships from the Mediterranean.