An ancient Roman ship was repaired multiple times, with multiple techniques, and in multiple places around the Adriatic Sea before it sank, a new study suggests. The findings highlight the expansive nature of trade and technical transfer in the Roman Republic.
The Ilovik-Paržine 1 shipwreck was discovered in 2016 in the Adriatic Sea, off the western coast of Croatia. It was a wooden sailing ship likely intended for maritime trade and transport around the Sea. When it sank nearly 2,200 years ago, it was carrying timber and amphoras that were likely full of wine.
Those goods — and the ship itself — have been much studied since the discovery. But in a new study published this month in Frontiers in Materials, a team of researchers examined, for the first time, the various layers of waterproof coating applied to the ship.
“Non-wood organic materials from shipwrecks have been largely under-analyzed,” Dr. Armelle Charrié, an archaeometrist at the University of Strasbourg and the chemist of the study, told Refractor. “On the Ilovik-Paržine 1 shipwreck, the waterproofing coatings are in the form of a brown, powdery block. Their aesthetic appearance is of no interest, unlike a piece of the hull or a fragment of an amphora. Yet they are part of the heritage materials, and their study potentially rich in information.”
The team examined 10 waterproofing samples from various parts of the ship. From these, they were able to distinguish approximately four or five separate applications of waterproof coating, possibly reflecting successive repairs over its lifetime.
Using these samples, the researchers were then able to reconstruct the environments where each separate coat of waterproofing was applied, and point to a possible journey of the ship throughout the Adriatic. How? Ancient pollen, trapped and protected in each layer of coating.
“An identified pollen grain is usually linked to a family, and more rarely to a genus or even a species,” Dr. Quentin Couillebault, a researcher in archaeology at Aix-Marseille University and a second author of the study, told us. “The assembly of pollen grains thus allows us to reconstruct a landscape.”
Geography trapped in pitch
Pollen collected from each of the waterproof coating samples reflected a “high diversity” of environments. Upon comparing them to pollen samples from known places around the Adriatic, the researchers were able to establish four “distinct clusters” of environments: a forest of holly oak and primroses, a terrain dominated by juniper and heath, a wet sedge meadow, and a shrubland of olive trees.
“Our study suggests that this vessel traveled between the western Adriatic coast, where it was likely built and where the first layer of coating was applied, and the eastern Adriatic coast,” Couillebault said. “Movements between the southern and northern sections of this eastern coastline are also possible, where repairs or recoating could have been carried out during the ship’s lifetime.”
The pollen indicates that most of the coating samples were applied in the southwestern Adriatic, near the city of Brindisi on the “heel” of Italy’s “boot.” This is particularly notable because Brindisi — called Brundisium during the Roman Republic — was one of the most important ports of the era and is hypothesized to have been the site of a major shipyard.
This Roman maritime trade ship likely spent most of its life transporting goods across the Adriatic. But it appears to have transported some cultural knowledge, too. The waterproofing coatings themselves were mostly made of pitch, a kind of tar derived from coniferous trees like pines. But one notable exception was a mixture of pitch and beeswax, a distinctly Greek waterproofing technique known as zopissa.
The researchers initially found this surprising, but they wrote that it in fact, supports their pollen findings. The major port of Brundisium, where the ship is believed to have been built, was closely connected to several Greek colonies.
“The identification of this mixture on the Ilovik-Paržine 1 shipwreck is of particular interest because it reinforces the hypothesis of a shipyard located in the Brindisi region, an area characterized by close interactions with the Greek colonies of southern Italy,” Couillebault said. “This example thus illustrates the circulation of technical knowledge and the phenomena of technological transfer across the Mediterranean basin.”
Source: Frontiers via EurekAlert
