Nearly 1,500 years ago, a Byzantine merchant ship swung perilously close to the Sicilian coastline, its heavy stone cargo doing little to help keep it on course. A wave lifted the vessel’s 100-foot hull and dashed it on a reef, sending as much as 150 tons of stone—columns, capitals, bases, and even an ornate church pulpit—to the seafloor. Archaeologist Justin Leidwanger has been excavating the Justinian-era “Church Wreck” near Marzamemi since 2014. He joined the Archaeological Institute of Ameri