A team co-directed by a UConn Avery Point professor is returning from its third and final field season in the Black Sea, having made a discovery the professor calls the first of its kind: a 2,000-year-old Roman ship with its mast, tillers and rope still intact.

Kroum Batchvarov, an associate professor of anthropology whose main focus is 17th-century maritime archaeology, is part of the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project.

But the team's most recent discovery dates back much further than the 17th century.

"Now we have a complete vessel, with the mast still standing, with the quarter rudders in place," Batchvarov said in a video. "It is an incredible find, the first of its kind ever."

The professor is still in Europe and will be back home in Connecticut on Monday, he said in an email to The Day. He is excited to finally be able to speak publicly about the project, which uncovered 20 shipwrecks in the 2017 field season, bringing the total to 60 since the project began in 2015.

Batchvarov joined scientists from Ukraine, Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, the Scandinavian countries and the United Kingdom for the expedition.

The Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project, known as the Black Sea MAP, set out in 2015 to investigate environmental changes around the Black Sea, such as the impact of sea level change after the last glacial cycle.

The team was interested in looking at the human response to these changes and learning more about prehistoric modes of communication, trade and warfare.

According to a news release from the Black Sea MAP, Hans K. Rausing established the Expedition and Education Foundation to commission the project, which was funded by the Julia and Hans Rausing Trust.

The three goals of the project are scientific exploration, promoting STEM careers and filming a documentary about the expedition, the release stated.

British Academy Film Award-winning filmmakers David Belton and Andy Byatt have been following the project for three years, and the documentary is expected to be released next year.

"I think we have all been blown away by the remarkable finds that Jon Adams and his team have made," said Byatt, a producer of the BBC series "Blue Planet." "The quality of the footage revealing this hidden world is absolutely unique."

The maritime researchers have brought back amphorae — narrow-necked Greek or Roman jars with two handles — and other artifacts. The depths at which they dived are anoxic, or without oxygen, which has allowed some artifacts and ship parts to be shockingly well-preserved.

Adams, the chief investigator and a professor at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, said the structural timber on a 10th-century merchant vessel looks as good as new.

"This suggested far older wrecks must exist and indeed even in the few days since the dive we have discovered three wrecks considerably older," he said, "including one from the Hellenistic period and another that may be older still."

The oldest ship found is from the Classical period, around the 4th or 5th century B.C.

At the Ropotamo river in Bulgaria, the team excavated the remains of an early Bronze Age settlement. According to the news release, it was a harbor for early Byzantine seafarers and then an anchorage for the Ottomans.

"We, the archaeologists, are in the role of Sherlock Holmes," said Batchvarov, the Avery Point professor. "We're gathering the clues, and the more accurately we gather them and the relationship between the clues, the more probable it is for us to reverse engineer what happened."

The team employed a remote-controlled robotic vehicle to survey the seabed and extract sediment cores. It also used photogrammetry, the science of taking measurements from photographs, and 3D printing to recreate models of the shipwrecks and landscape.

The Black Sea MAP also had an educational component. For a week in April, students took master classes in the lab and on a research vessel, and learned to drive mini remotely operated underwater vehicles to look for submerged artifacts.

Students were then chosen to either join the Black Sea research vessel in its third field season or carry out data projects at the University of Southampton.

Dani Newman, education and outreach assistant for Black Sea MAP, feels that if "people could actually closely examine what we can see and what we are able to do, it would make everyone appreciate what a finite resource we have and how amazing our maritime heritage is, and it really is the story of all of us, and how we got to where we are in this world."

e.moser@theday.com