Jars Retrieved From The Ocean Reveal The Secrets of Ancient Roman Wine

During the Roman period, winemakers along the coast of Italy may have used locallysourced grapes and imported tar pitches, according to jars recovered from the ocean.

Three different wine jars, oramphorae, were recovered and analyzed, giving researchers a useful insight into the practices for producing wine in this region in the late Greco- Italic period.

The research combines some of the latest chemical analysis techniques with other approaches used in archaeobotany to discover more about these jars.

The researchers wrote in their paper that the marine Amphorae, retrieved from the ancient anchorage of San Felice Circeo, offered a rare opportunity to develop interdisciplinary research through archaeobotanical and chemical analysis.

One of the lab techniques used here was a combination of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, different ways of separating and identifying chemical markers in a material.

The researchers looked for the same thing. This type of analysis has been done before, but not often on wine jars like these, and rarely with the purpose of trying to understand the wider historical context for an artifact.

The jars were used to make red and white wine, and local plants were used, but it's not clear whether or not these plants were domesticated at the time.

It's possible that pine was used to flavor the wine and waterproof the jars. The pine used in the tar pitch would have come from outside the region, according to the researchers.

Some of the pollen grains used in the study. (Chassouant et al., PLOS One, 2022)

The presence of both pollen and charcoal allowed a better understanding of the pitch origin.

There are ceramics and artifacts found around the San Felice Circeo harbor. The area is thought to have been close to a Roman canal.

The range of interdisciplinary methods used in teasing out the chemical makeup of what's left in these jars has allowed the researchers to go further.

Combining chemical and botanical expertise with other historical and archaeological records, as well as previous studies into wine jars such as these, will allow us to dig into the surrounding history of the artifacts.

The researchers say that they have pushed the conclusion further in the understanding of ancient practices by using different approaches.

The research is in a journal.