Grapes and vines of the Phoenicians: Morphometric analyses of pips from modern varieties and Iron Age archaeological sites in the Western Mediterranean

Abstract

The present study aims to contribute to the investigation of the role of Phoenicians in the spreading and trade of the grapevine through the morphometric analysis of grape pips. Waterlogged and charred samples were selected from three Iron Age sites in the Western Mediterranean: Motya (Sicily, Italy), Nuraghe S'Urachi (Sardinia, Italy) and Huelva (Andalusia, Spain). While only Motya is a Phoenician foundation, all three were nevertheless associated with Phoenician expansion and cultural interaction. Ten cultivars from the "Vivaio Federico Paulsen" in Marsala (western Sicily) were chosen as modern reference material.The key challenge was the comparison of archaeological pips preserved through different fossilization processes, which was overcome using two reference datasets of the same modern cultivars, one uncharred and one charred.Statistical analyses of pip outlines show that archaeological remains from these sites is morphologically comparable to that of modern varieties, suggesting that the archaeological finds represent domesticated grapevines.PCA analyses allowed an inter-site comparison, showing that samples from the three sites are clearly distinguishable based on their morphology. This indicates the use of different varieties which may be due to different factors.Our analysis represents a first step towards a better understanding of diachronic and synchronic relationship between vines grown in the ancient West Mediterranean, which could be expanded by analysing grape pips from more contexts and more sites, compared against a wider selection of modern cultivars.

Archaeophenomics of ancient domestic plants and animals using geometric morphometrics : a review

“…Taxa References Mammals Pig (Cucchi et al, 2008(Cucchi et al, , 2011(Cucchi et al, , 2016(Cucchi et al, , 2021Dobney et al, 2008;Bartosiewicz et al, 2013;Krause-Kyora et al, 2013;Ottoni et al, 2013;Duval et al, 2015Duval et al, , 2018Evin, Flink, et al, 2015;Balasse et al, 2016;Frémondeau et al, 2017;Price & Evin, 2017;Bopp-Ito et al, 2018;Marom et al, 2019) Dog (Drake & Klingenberg, 2008;Drake et al, 2015Drake et al, , 2017Daza Perea, 2017;Geiger et al, 2017;Fisher, 2019;Ameen et al, 2019;Manin & Evin, 2020;Schoenebeck et al, 2021) Caprines (sheep and goat) (Haruda, 2017;Pöllath et al, 2018Pöllath et al, , 2019Haruda et al, 2019;Colominas et al, 2019) Equids (horse and donkey) (Seetah et al, 2016;Cucchi et al, 2017; Grapevine (Bacilieri et al, 2017;Bonhomme et al, 2020;Bouby et al, 2018Bouby et al, , 2021Figueiral et al, 2015;Mariotti Lippi et al, 2020;Margaritis et al, 2021;Moricca et al, 2021;Orrù, Grillo, Lovicu...…”

Sacred and secular aspects of Phoenicians' life at Motya (Sicily, Italy) inferred by multidisciplinary archaeobotanical analyses

“…The pips were studied morphologically and identified as belonging to different varieties of Vitis vinifera subsp. vinifera, the domesticated subspecies (Moricca et al, 2021). The proportion of pips to pedicels indicates winemaking (Margaritis and Jones, 2006).…”

“…In the past couple of years, the scenario has changed following the publication of papers focused on archaeobotanical remains (Moricca et al, 2020;Moricca et al, in press;Moricca et al, 2021). In this study these results will be summarized and considered together for the first time, allowing to combine studies of macro-and micro-remains performed on sacred and secular contexts, thus depicting a broad image of human-plant interactions of Phoenicians at Motya.…”

A glimpse into the viticulture of Roman Lusitania: morphometric analysis of charred grape pips from Torre dos Namorados, Portugal

“…2700 BCE) (Kroll 1991;McGovern et al 1997;Valamoti et al 2007;Pagnoux et al 2015). Archaeobotanical remains of grape pips have also been recovered in the western Mediterranean area from various archaeological sites (Zohary et al 2012) and also from Sardinia and Sicily (Ucchesu et al 2015;Moricca et al 2021). In Sardinia, the study of grape pips from a Middle Bronze Age Nuragic settlement provided the first evidence of primitive cultivated V. vinifera in this area (Ucchesu et al 2015).…”