In the early second century bce a ship arrived at the urban harbour of Pisa, having made its way up from North Africa via Sicily and Campania. Before it could be fully unloaded, however, it collided with part of the harbour structure, probably during a storm, and sank rapidly; at least one member of the crew went down with the vessel, along with some of the animals that made up an important part of its cargo. Over the years, tides dispersed most of the remains; the entire harbour became silted up and then forgotten until 1998, when preliminary construction work on a new regional headquarters for the Italian State Railway brought the complex back to light. Along with other harbour structures, and at least another fifteen vessels ranging in date from the third century bce to the fifth century ce, archaeologists uncovered the damaged pier and some of the large timbers of the ship that had crashed into it, along with fragments of its cargo and the personal effects of its crew, and some human bones (Bruni 2000).

As in most ancient shipwrecks, the bulk of the finds were pottery. The ship had been carrying Graeco-Italic wine amphorae from the Campanian region, which provide the main evidence for its date, and Punic amphorae from North Africa that may, to judge from the number of pigs' shoulder bones found in the wreckage, have contained preserved pork joints.