Construction date of the Antikythera Mechanism relative to the shipwreck

Determine whether the Antikythera Mechanism was constructed contemporaneously with the circa 60 BCE shipwreck in which it was discovered or whether it was built significantly earlier.

Background

The Antikythera Mechanism was recovered from a Mediterranean shipwreck dated to the decades around 60 BCE. Establishing when the device itself was manufactured relative to the shipwreck bears on questions of provenance, technological context, and the interpretation of wear and manufacturing quality.

The paper notes that despite the dating of the wreck, scholarly consensus has not been reached on the mechanism’s construction date, explicitly flagging this as an unresolved question in the broader literature.