The shipwrecks of the Middle Byzantine period were excavated during the construction of the Marmaray railway and metro station in Yenikapı between 2004 and 2012. This has become the largest investigations because of the size and the number of the shipwrecks and its associated artifacts. In the previous report, the electron micrographs of the samples revealed that a wide range in the degree of deterioration by erosional bacteria and soft-rot fungus obtained from one shipwreck (Köse and Taylor 2013). In this study, therefore, genetical approaches using rDNA ITS region was conducted to identify fungal species existed in the samples. Six ascomycete strains were detected, and one of them was Penicillium paneum, which is known as a typical soft-rot fungus of wood. We are identifying other fungal strains and erosion bacteria to clarify the mechanism of degradation for remediation and restoration of the shipwrecks.

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