Phoenicians and later Carthaginians routinely navigated the coasts of the northeastern Atlantic and presumably their trading vessels, blown off course in a storm, could have reached North America. Such accidental one-way contact, as intimated in the last paragraph of Stark's report, could account for the presence of bronze artefacts as well as being compatible with the lack of evidence for a regular settlement, and the absence of indications in Native American oral history (as such shipwrecks would be few in number and just a local curiosity, soon to be forgotten).