92
the current state of preservation of the site, it is unfortu-
nate that almost 50 years have passed between the initial
discovery and today’s interventions, because the degra-
dation that has occurred over the past four decades would
certainly have been much less.
Setting forth from Gasparetto’s assumption on the identi-
fication of the ship, Mauro Bondioli and Mariangela Ni-
colardi initiated systematic work in the Venetian archives
with the objective of examining all the preserved docu-
ments from the offices of more then sixty notaries public,
active in Venice in 1583 and 1584. The final confirmation
that the
Gagliana grossa
is truly lying on the seafloor at
Gnalić came at the end of June 2012, at a time when the
trial research was in full swing. The data on the loading of
5,000 round window panes for Sultan Murad III comple-
tely corresponded to the situation encountered in 1967 and
the unbelievable quantity of round glass items that were
then observed throughout the site. With time, new chap-
ters were added to the story, the ship’s owners, merchants
and crewmembers were found, a detailed biography of the
captain came to light, and much more. The historical data
have supplemented and are still supplementing the existing
archaeological insights, and future archaeological resear-
ch is expected to provide responses to some questions on
which the historical sources are silent.
The study of the environmental impact of the heavy me-
tals that are even todaypresent in the site’s surface layer has
proven to be particularly interesting. Thus far it is known
19. Priprema za fotogrametrijsko snimanje nalazišta 2012. (foto: S.
Govorčin)
19. Preparation for a photogrammetric survey of the site in 2012
(photograph by S. Govorčin)
20. Fotogrametrijsko snimanje nalazišta 2012. (foto: M. Brzac)
20. Photogrammetric survey of the site in 2012 (photograph byM. Brzac)
