An international team of archaeologists plans to return this month to the site of an ancient shipwreck off a Greek island. This time, they will have the aid of an advanced diving suit that will give them much more time to probe for new artifacts.

Part robot and part submarine, the lightweight suit, called the Exosuit, is intended to allow a diver to work for long periods at depths of more than 1,000 feet, avoiding time-consuming decompression periods. The suit provides a diver with freedom of movement because of a propulsion system and from an unusual set of rotating joints developed by Phil Nuytten, an explorer and diving technology specialist.

Evocative of the “Iron Man” movies and their hero, Tony Stark, the aluminum-alloy suit allows the operator to sit on a bicycle-type seat. It is connected to the surface by a high-speed fiber-optic network that relays high-definition video, and it has robotic grippers that will allow divers to manipulate artifacts found at the site.

The Exosuit has a self-contained life-support system designed to allow divers to work as long as two and a half days without surfacing, though at first, the shifts will be much shorter. Its rotary joints are extremely resilient; the smallest, at the wrist, can withstand up to six tons of pressure on a small surface area, Mr. Nuytten said.