ARCHEOLOGISTS FIND HISTORY IN THE DEPTHS.

Byline: John Noble Wilford The New York Times

Exploring off the northwest coast of Sicily with a once-secret nuclear submarine, oceanographers and archeologists have discovered the largest concentration of ancient shipwrecks ever found in the deep sea, including one ship that may have carried a prefabricated temple.

The findings, announced Wednesday, take archeology deeper than ever before, promising a new era of discoveries in maritime history.

A research team led by Robert Ballard, whose previous finds include the Titanic and the German battleship Bismarck, announced the discovery of eight sailing ships lying 2,500 feet beneath the Mediterranean. Until now, maritime archeology has been largely confined to coastal shallows of less than 200 feet, the range for scuba divers.

But with the U.S. Navy's NR-1 nuclear submarine, the explorers were able to reach 3,000 feet and search the bottom for weeks at a time, using long-range sonar to detect shipwrecks at great distances. Then, with the remotely controlled vehicle Jason, which can descend 20,000 feet and use grappling arms to collect artifacts, the team inspected the wrecks up close and retrieved 115 items from the oldest ships.

Because the artifacts were found in international waters, they presumably belong to the salvagers under maritime law. Their historical value is inestimable, their monetary value unestimated.

Five ships were from Roman times, presumably lost in storms while plying the busy Rome-North Africa trade route. The oldest, a 100-foot-long vessel dating from about 100 B.C., is one of the earliest Roman wrecks ever discovered.

Her holds were filled with amphorae, the clay shipping containers of the ancient world. Another Roman ship, probably from the first century A.D., carried cut stones, apparently ready for assembly into a temple.

Also in the wreckage, which is spread over 20 square miles, were three more modern sailing ships. One was an Islamic ship from the 18th or early 19th century; the other two were lost in the 19th century.

Ballard, president of the Institute for Exploration in Mystic, Conn., and other team members described the discovery in interviews and at a news conference at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C.

Recalling the view of the wrecks from the submarine, Ballard said in an interview, ``All of a sudden, we realized we had found a graveyard of ships spanning 2,000 years.''

The Navy still owns and operates the NR-1, but at the end of the Cold War it parted the curtain of secrecy and made the submarine available for exploration, including Ballard's research into ancient shipping.

Anna Marguerite McCann, the expedition's director of archeology, was enthusiastic about the immediate discovery, but even more so about its implications for the future. Both she and Ballard spoke of the research as a demonstration that deep-sea archeology is emerging as a new branch of science.

When marine archeology was limited to 200 feet, 95 percent of the sea floor was beyond its reach. Archeologists and historians often assumed that mariners in antiquity hugged the coast and rarely ventured into the open sea. Their assumption is only now being disproved.

``The high seas were definitely traveled by mariners in ancient times,'' Ballard said. ``That means the potential for discovery with this new technology is huge. The average depth of the Mediterranean is 9,000 feet, and so there must be a tremendous amount of antiquity preserved in the deep sea.''

Not only does the large number of shipwrecks in a relatively small area suggest heavy traffic, but the state of preservation at great depths promises to be especially revealing.

``Deep-sea wrecks are more likely to be intact and their artifacts unbroken,'' McCann said. ``In shallow waters, they are more likely to get banged up by waves and against reefs, encrusted with coral or buried by sand or looted by treasure hunters.''

The wooden decks, rigging and upper hulls of the five Roman ships had been destroyed by wood borers, team members said, but timbers buried in mud were well preserved. The cargoes appeared to be undisturbed. The pilot of the remotely controlled Jason, which is owned by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, Mass., was able to maneuver the robot on a detailed survey of each wreck and pick up delicate artifacts, including fine glassware.

Among the items are kitchen and other household wares, fine bronze vessels, two heavy lead anchor pieces and at least eight different types of amphorae intended for storing wine, olive oil, fish sauce and preserved fruit, McCann said.

One of the most intriguing items is the heavy cargo of high-quality marble or granite building stones still in the hold of a Roman ship from the first century. The artifacts include monolithic columns and large cut blocks of stone.

``Some of the stones appeared to have notches where they were to be fitted together,'' Ballard said. ``Perhaps this was a pre-fab temple being shipped somewhere.''

McCann, an adjunct professor of archeology at Boston University, said discoveries like these promise to provide a new picture of trade in the ancient Mediterranean. ``A new economic history of the Roman world is going to have to be written,'' she said.

In 1989, Ballard, working with McCann, made their first ancient deep-sea discovery, a small fourth-century Roman ship they named Isis. The Jason robot was used to recover artifacts that suggested it was a widely traveled trading vessel. The location of the wreck, off Sicily, suggested that the ship was sailing between Rome and North Africa.

For the new explorations, Ballard's expedition returned to the site, about 80 miles northwest of Trapani, Sicily. The waters there are known for their treacherous currents and dangerous reefs.

In some cases, the submarine picked up debris trails on the bottom, evidence of what Ballard said was a storm-tossed ship in distress that was jettisoning cargo in an attempt to save itself. Sometimes at the head of a debris trail would be the wreck of the ship. A trail that did not lead to a wreck presumably told the story of a storm's survivor.

These trails reminded Ballard of the story of St. Paul in Acts 27:38: When his Rome-bound ship ran into a storm, ``they lightened the ship'' by throwing over the cargo.

Further exploration of the Rome-North Africa route is planned and next summer, Ballard said, he is to investigate trade routes in the Black Sea.

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PHOTO (color) Scientists examine a 2,000-year-old clay pot recovered from a Roman ship found in deep water off the coast of Sicily by an exploring nuclear submarine.

Associated Press