A wreck is often described as a time capsule, and in one respect the description holds: a ship sank on a particular day carrying a cargo assembled for a particular voyage, which is a precision no settlement offers. What follows the sinking is less obliging. Currents scatter light material, timber is consumed by marine organisms except where sediment buries it quickly, and the assemblage that survives is biased towards ceramics and metal. The apparent completeness of a wreck therefore conceals selection as severe as anything on land, differently distributed. Excavators who treat the surviving cargo as a manifest tend to overstate the importance of durable goods in trade that, on documentary evidence, moved a great deal of textile and grain.