Archaeologists who traveled to a Bronze Age temple complex in Cyprus to study ancient stonework found something they were not looking for: hidden ship carvings etched into the walls, many of them past the point where human eyes could pick them out. The 23 ships, revealed by high-resolution laser scans, were made over roughly 300 years by different hands in different centuries.

The discovery is detailed in a new study by Graham C. Braun and colleagues, published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. According to the study, the research team scanned the temple walls at Kition Kathari in 2024 to build 3D reconstructions of the stone blocks, intending to learn more about ancient masonry techniques. The scans stripped away decades of surface damage and exposed faint lines no one had noticed before: most of the newly found ships consist of little more than a few carved strokes.

A fleet hiding in plain sight

The Kition Kathari complex was excavated starting in 1959, and archaeologists have known for decades that the site held ship graffiti. Nineteen vessels were recorded on the southern wall of Temple 1 in 1982, and two more were later found on an altar in Temple 4. Those carvings were already worn when they were first documented, and the excavations that uncovered them exposed the stonework to further weathering, erasing detail year after year.

Braun, of the University of Cincinnati, led the team that returned to the blocks with laser equipment. Their original goal was narrow: to feed a larger study of ashlar masonry and Late Bronze Age building practices on the island. Caroline Barnes of the University of British Columbia, a member of the team, said the group had not expected to find more ships at all. The carvings had simply been overlooked for four decades, worn down past the point where human eyes could pick them out.

Three centuries of carvers

The new analysis suggests the ships were not created in a single episode. As the researchers reported, a small repair block added to the Temple 1 wall about 150 years after the rest of the masonry went up carries a ship too, which they read as evidence that carving continued generation after generation. The fleet spans as many as 300 years.

Placement within the complex appears deliberate. The Temple 1 carvings sit at eye level on the southern wall, which overlooked a sheltered bay that likely held the ancient harbor, and the authors note they would have resembled the silhouettes of vessels moored nearby. The two graffiti on the Temple 4 altar sit low, near the floor, and the study suggests that in the glow of the altar fire they would have looked like ships sailing on flickering light.

Ships on both sides of the collapse

To make sense of the finds, the team grouped the vessels into six categories and compared them against ship depictions from across the eastern Mediterranean. The set includes Levantine merchantmen, Minoan sailing ships, hybrid galleys possibly from the Carmel Coast, and one distinctly Cypriot hybrid. The carvings do not cluster around a single moment. They date from both before and after the Bronze Age collapse that upended much of the region.

That continuity challenges the way the era is often described. The researchers said the term collapse often implies that everything was erased and started anew much later, but on Cyprus things played out differently: people kept carving ships while cities elsewhere were being abandoned. The study notes that the practice is attested on the island even into the medieval period, which suggests ships and seafaring were a constant part of daily life for the community around Kition.

Saving the fleet before the stone goes

The work is not finished. Time keeps eating at the blocks, and the researchers believe ships were also carved into areas that have since broken away. While they cannot stop the erosion, Braun and Barnes plan to share the hidden ship carvings through virtual reconstructions of the temple walls, including a VR experience that places viewers inside the space as it may have looked centuries ago.

The full study, The Ship Graffiti from Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age Kition, Cyprus: New Additions and Reconsiderations 40 Years Later, appeared in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology in 2026 and is referenced at doi.org/10.1080/10572414.2026.2702905. Phys.org covered the findings on September 17, 2026, and its report can be read at phys.org/news/2026-09-laser-scans-reveal-hidden-ship. The Cyprus walls are not the only ancient find in the news this month: archaeologists also uncovered a sealed Chimu mausoleum at Chan Chan in Peru.