The Ancients - Volcanic Vineyards of Pompeii

Episode Date: November 19, 2020

An ancient town, buried and preserved beneath volcanic ash, Pompeii is a gift to archaeologists and historians seeking to find out more about the lives of the civilians in a regular Roman town. Beyond the well recognised plaster casts of the bodies of people and animals alike, and the structures and artwork maintained in situ, however, is evidence of a very specific system. That is the system of the cultivation of grapes and the process of extracting every usable substance from them to make wine. Positioned in the Campania region of Italy, Pompeii shared fertile soils, perfect climatic conditions and proximity to a busy sea port. The grapes of Pompeii may have ended up on the tables of the house at which they were grown; they might have been made into low quality wine for manual workers or better quality wine valued at more than the wages of many; or, they might have been shipped far and wide.Emlyn Dodd is a Fellow at the Australian Archaeological Institute in Athens and is currently directing a survey project across Cycladic islands which, among other things, is investigating the production of wine and oil in the Classical to Late Antique eras. He spoke to Tristan about what the evidence from Pompeii tells us about grape growth and wine production there, and whether this can be scaled out to other settlements in the Roman Mediterranean.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's The Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and today's podcast we are talking wine. Now Pompeii, it is perhaps the most extraordinary archaeological site of ancient Roman times. But did you also know that during Pompeii's height, this town was also the centre of a flourishing wine trade.

It was here that wine was produced, in villas surrounding and in Pompeii itself, and also where wine was exported from across the Roman Empire. Now to talk about Pompeii's extraordinary wine trade, I was delighted to be joined by Dr Emlyn Dodd from Macquarie University in Sydney. Emlyn is a leading expert on Pompeian wine trade. He's done a lot of research around it. So it was great to get him on the show to talk about this topic, but also to use this as a springboard to talk about Emlyn's more recent research about wine production elsewhere in the Mediterranean, particularly

in the central Aegean on the Kukla Days Islands. Without further ado, here is Emlyn. Emlyn, great to have you on the show. Thanks for having me. Now, Pompeii and Herculaneum, it's surviving archaeology. It's so pivotal for learning so much about the ancient Mediterranean world and ancient Rome. And this is no less true when looking at wine production in ancient Rome. It's completely right. We're very

fortunate with the preservation of Pompeii in general and like you said wine production is no exception. A really nice example is the way that the famous bodies of Pompeii are preserved and then we can look at them through the cluster casts which really vividly shows us what the people of Pompeii were like and how they met their demise. The same has been done actually with wine production and the vine roots that people were actually growing when the eruption happened. Some wonderful archaeological work was done by Josiemski. She discovered cavities that roots made when the volcano erupted and poured plaster into them and this has illuminated exactly how the vines were growing and how the grapes were cultivated when the volcano erupted.

exactly how the vines were growing and how the grapes were cultivated when the volcano erupted. And along with those kinds of things, we find carbonized grape seeds and pips that have been amazingly preserved. And even in one of the insula at Pompeii, we have whole grapes that have been preserved from the eruption and ended up having a nice caramelized glossy appearance so that they stuck out quite nicely in the archaeology. So yeah, there's some amazing aspects that Pompeii provides that we just wouldn't have otherwise in terms of our knowledge of ancient wine production. And I guess this is really also nicely shown through experimental archaeology that's happening now. We've got the family of Mastro Berardino who are recreating ancient wine at the site of Pompeii

using experimental archaeology and ethnographic data. They've actually replanted ancient grape varieties, one called the Pier di Rosso, at locations within the city of Pompeii where we know vines were growing in AD 79 when the volcano erupted. And then they've pressed and made wine out of these using ancient techniques that the ancient writers tell us about. So we really try and get a taste of the past through this thing. And it also wouldn't have been possible had we not had the preservation levels of Pompeii. That's absolutely amazing because normally when you think of Pompeii you might think of the bodies or the well-preserved houses but also we've been able to preserve the vine roots. Yeah absolutely and the information that you can glean from something as simple as that which we wouldn't have otherwise is really

really amazing and then of course you can branch that out to link it to things like the sociocultural and the economic use of wine and how it was used in religion in the town and trade and in the taverns and the inns that we get all through the town. So yeah, it's absolutely incredible and invaluable. Brilliant. Well, let's dive into that. But first of all, regarding Pompeii itself, was Pompeii, and particularly in the Roman period, but also before, was it famed for the quality of its wine? This is a slightly trickier one to answer, whether Pompeii itself was famous for its wine production. But the region it was in was certainly famous, the region of Campania. We get very, very famous authors like Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, which mentions the vine-growing hills and noble wines of Campania and some amazing

descriptions like that and he even mentioned some of the wine types which were preferred by the elite like the satine and the Quequiban wines from the region and of course the very very famous Falernian wine which we get referenced throughout antiquity was grown not so far away as well in Campania and then we have other authors authors like Marshall describing grapes filling dripping vats in Campania and ridges loved by Bacchus and these amazing romantic notions of Campania and wine production going on there. So even with these caveats of, you know, romantic and artistic license in ancient literature, and then maybe some local bias from someone like Pliny who actually lived in the region, it's clear that there was some kind of notoriety for wine production in Campania in the region that Pompeii was set in. And something else which is really interesting and hints at the fame of the wine in this region is that we start seeing early counterfeit

wine or fraud going on. We've got local Campanian amphora types, so the jars that wine was stored in, we've got these being mimicked in other regions, So people trying to pass their wine off as Campanian wine. And we've also got non-local amphoras stamped with counterfeit Campanian stamps on the wine. So also trying to imitate that this was Campanian wine, but it wasn't in fact. So if people are willing to risk their business and their reputation on a fake product, there must be something behind that. And there must be some sort of fame or notoriety behind the wine. Do we have any idea, I mean, looking at the topography of Campania, why the wine from this region was, well, so high quality? I think the region in general is incredibly suitable for agriculture. We have not only vines growing, we have cereals and vegetables and fruits and even olives. We don't even have

many olives in the region today. But we've got ancient pollen from Pompeii, which is showing that there are large concentrations of olive trees present. So it's obviously a very fertile region in general. And for wine production and vine growing in particular, we've got the fertile volcanic soil, the temperate Mediterranean climate we see elsewhere across the Mediterranean. It's got very favourable exposures on its slopes and then most importantly a reliable source of water as well which is really important obviously for agriculture. And then something which is I guess more commonly overlooked but equally as important is Pompeii's geographic location. It's close by trading mechanisms like ports and harbours. There's the major port of Puteoli which was one of the most important in Italy before the rise of the really large ports at Portus outside Rome. So

it's really well connected to a kind of strategic network of trade routes across the empire, which obviously helped its export and production of wine. Ah, so it has topographic but also economic benefits from where it's situated. Absolutely, yeah. And then the fact that we have over 150 Roman farms, which have been surveyed and excavated in this Vesuvian region, is testament to just how productive this place was in the Roman era. Absolutely. And so if you give me another, probably a little difficult question to ask, because we're going before Romans just once more, but do we have any idea when wine production begins in the region of Campania and with who? Yeah, you're absolutely

right. A very difficult question. Looking back into the origins of wine production anywhere is incredibly contentious and difficult. We've got some great evidence in the Neolithic period from about 8,000 years ago in countries like modern Georgia and Iran, where we've got fermented grape juice preserved on ceramics. But Italy, we don't go back quite so far. We know that winemaking was ingrained in an Etruscan civilization. So up further north in Italy, there was stuff going on quite early on. And then we also know that the Greeks brought wine production over with them when they colonized these southern Italian areas in Sicily. So we're not sure exactly how or who started it in Pompeii or Campania. It's probably more likely

a Greek influence because they had quite a heavy influence in the region. And we know that they even called this region the land of vines. We think that they came here and they saw wild vines and thought, hey, we can take advantage of this. We know how to make wine. We know how to cultivate vines. So they brought their own vines over and they also domesticated the wild ones that they found. So that's probably how it started. But yeah, a difficult thing to put your finger on. No, absolutely.

And especially when looking at the history of a region like Campania, especially when you're thinking of the Greeks, but the Samnites and then the Romans, there's a lot of different peoples in this region, but it seems that wine production is always underneath and keeps going. Absolutely. Yeah, a very cosmopolitan and complex region. But maybe, you know, in future we'll uncover something which will really try and nail this down.

Absolutely. And looking at Pompeii itself in the Roman period, how many viticultural locations do we know of in Pompeii? In general, viticulture and vines are everywhere in Pompeii. The archaeologist I mentioned before, Jaschemsky, did some work on the gardens of Pompeii and she found that there is at least one garden in every house of the city and some of the larger houses had three or four gardens in their area. And in these gardens, vines were used very, I guess, extensively for a range of reasons. Not only just to produce grapes for wine but also to produce grapes for table fruit or for raisins. They were also used as shade over trachlinia or dining areas.

So vines and viticulture was happening and permeated throughout Pompeii. We've got evidence from the local inns and taverns that we think produced their own wine from vineyards on the premises. The inn of Uxinus has 32 vines in its garden, so quite some sort of production going on there. But it's hard to tell whether it was always used for wine or whether they were producing for table grapes if we don't have some definitive evidence of a wine press or a vat, which we can say, hey, they were using these grapes to produce wine. So there's a number of locations going on, but there's also some sites which we know were producing wine on a larger scale within the city. And I think one of the best examples there is the place that we call the Four Road Boario or the cattle market. But we've actually discovered now through the work of Dushemsky, it's not actually a cattle market.

It's a vineyard which was producing quite a large amount of wine. Very neatly planted vineyard and wine press with tendolia or ceramic storage vessels on one side of the property. And numerous triclinia scattered throughout the vineyard and wine press with ten dolia or ceramic storage vessels on one side of the property and numerous triclinia scattered throughout the vineyard so these were reclining areas where they could drink or eat and it starts to paint a really vivid picture because this vineyard this foro boario was located right across from the amphitheater on pompeii so you can imagine the owner of this vineyard doing a roaring trade with people coming and going from the amphitheater dropping into his tavern and his triclin, reclining in the vineyard and having some food and drink and then heading on their way. So it really starts to illuminate what life at Pompeii

was like. And also very interesting because it's quite an important piece of land and a large piece of land within the city, this Fora Boario, and the fact that they dedicated this to a vineyard and viticulture really shows how important that it was within their society. So it starts to raise some interesting questions about ancient urban land use and city planning, and really reinforces the high profit nature and prominent place of viticulture. Yes, that's really interesting how you're saying that it seems to be widespread throughout the city, and as you're saying, sometimes in the direct heart of the city that you can find these vineyards, and from what you're saying sometimes in the direct heart of the city that you can find these vineyards and from what you're saying they can sometimes differ in the size of

them. Yeah absolutely highly variable and as I said probably produced grapes for a wide range of reasons. We've got those ones which were quite clearly for wine production but then also scattered everywhere in the city for smaller and domestic scale use as well. So what do we know about the production of wine from grapes? How do they produce wine? This is a good question, which also we find a lot of evidence at Pompeii. So basically, Pompeii and wine production followed a fairly typical process used in antiquity, and a process that was still used all the way up to the Industrial Revolution, really, with very little change. And this includes, I guess, two main components. The first is treading of the grapes, and the second is mechanical pressing. And the two were usually used together, but sometimes separately as well for a few

different reasons. They were used both to increase the quantity of wine produced, but also to produce a wider range of qualities. And the ancient agricultural texts really talk to this well, and fill in our gaps from the archaeological evidence. So we know that the first juices that came out of the grapes, even just by static pressure, so laying the grapes down by themselves and not doing anything, was also the most prized juice. And this is said to produce the best wine by some of the authors like Pliny and Colly Mellor. And we know that sometimes the grapes were just laid out by themselves and left to let the juice rest out for a number of days. And this was really,

really prized juice, even more desired than grape juice produced by treading. And this was often the second quality best wine, if we look at that produced by treading. And usually about 80% of the juice was extracted through this method. And we've got great evidence across Pompeii and in Campania from the larger villa estates producing wine by treading too. Interestingly, there is a villa just outside of Rome at a place called Agnani, where we think it was an imperial estate and they were producing wine only by treading. There was no mechanical pressing happening at all. So obviously a very high quality wine being produced there.

thing happening at all. So obviously a very high quality wine being produced there. Following the treading process, when you start to look at the mechanical pressing that was happening at Pompeii and in Campania, they'd gather all the remaining pulp and the grape skins and the stalks and the seeds and place it in baskets, often made of woven rushes or wound rope or cloth. And then they would press it under a mechanical press, usually a lever press in Campania or Pompeii. And they'd press it for multiple times, and each would serve a different purpose. The first pressing was sometimes equivalent with the trod grape juice or must, and it was deemed to be a similar quality. But then as you progressed through the second and the third and the fourth pressings, it would gradually get worse and worse and worse. Columella tells us that the second pressing tastes of the knife. So you'd imagine that pressing the skins a little bit more would produce more acids and would create a bit more of a bitter taste and a bit less desirable. And he also tells us that

this was used more often in medicine than for drinking. And then we have our later pressings, which produce progressively lower qualities. And authors like Cato and Varro tell us that the lowest quality pressing involves soaking the leaves of the wine in water and then pressing that substance. And it produced a very cheap after wine, which is suitable for workmen and the lower classes of society. So you can really see that the Romans maximized the use of the fruit and minimized wastage, which is, I think, something that we often lose sight of in modern times. So from what you're saying there, the Romans, they were very keen on getting as much wine out of the vineyard as possible. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. We have amazing evidence for other forms of production too, when the Romans started to get a bit more creative, I guess. Some of the ancient authors

talk about beating grapes with rods or rolling columns over them to press the must out. So I think they really did try and make the most of this fruit that they laboured over for years to grow and cultivate. And regarding the selling of this wine, you mentioned how there's different levels of quality, as it were, depending on the method that they used to produce the wine. I'm guessing we can imagine these cellars in central Pompeii or wherever opposite the amphitheatre

being able to section out the qualities of wine on their stall, as it were, for the different levels of ancient society. Yeah, it's absolutely true. I think it was obviously quite nicely designated. We see in Herculaneum, a nearby town to Pompeii, at a wine shop there, we've got this beautiful evidence at the front of the shop where there's four pictures painted on the wall, each in a different colour, And then there's some text designating what's in each picture. And it was actually advertising four different types of wine for sale at this shop and each for a different price. And when you look at the prices that

illustrated, it's very difficult to compare to modern notions of money, but some are actually quite expensive compared to the typical wage for, say, an example, a Roman soldier at the time. So there's definitely some stratification of wine sale and market-orientated produce going on. And in regards to the mechanical press that you mentioned just there, from Pompeii, from the extraordinary archaeology that survives, do we have any evidence surviving that shows how this mechanism worked? Yeah, absolutely. So as I said, the most common example was a lever and drum press in this area around Pompeii and Campania, and this varied greatly across the Mediterranean.

Each different region or culture had its own preference for type. It seems to be highly regionalised. But in terms of this lever and drum press, we've got examples all the way from the 4th century BC or potentially earlier that are popping up in North Africa, and it seems to have continued to be used all the way through to late antiquity in the Byzantine era across the Mediterranean. So a really, really broad chronology for this type of wine press. And essentially it utilised a large wooden beam and these are often of monumental scale in some of the villas around Campania like the Villa of the Mysteries or Villa Pisanella. These wooden presses are

absolutely mammoth and take up huge amounts of space in these villas and the wooden lever was anchored using various methods sometimes it was a niche in the wall sometimes it was slotted into a wooden upright post or between a few posts and then the free end extended out over a waterproofed area so the Romans were obviously quite handy with their waterproofing techniques and they used something called opus signinum to waterproof these wineries. And the beam would be attached to two wooden uprights which were cemented into the ground at the other end of this waterproofed area. And between these uprights there'd be a circular barrel which was attached to a rope between the beam and the barrel. And when this barrel was turned

with a handspake, the rope would pull the lever down and effectively press the grapes, which would be piled underneath it. Did I just hear you say that the Romans were able to waterproof their vineyards? Yeah, that's right. They had a specific type of plaster that they used in these agricultural areas, so in the wine presses and the treading floors, and they would literally waterproof every surface to make sure that they didn't lose any of the must into the architecture. And it's really, really stunning how much waterproof plaster they actually use. In some of these larger villas, you'll find rooms and rooms waterproofed, the floors and the walls to make sure nothing was lost. Once again, the time and effort put into creating and maintaining this vineyard,

do you think this really emphasises the importance the Romans placed on wine production? Yeah, absolutely. You definitely get the sense that, especially in the larger scale productions, it was a really, really profitable exercise for them and something that was seen as a very, very favourable activity to get into. We know through some of the ancient texts that it was one of the most profitable forms of agriculture. And I think the level and dedication you see the Romans putting into this really, really clearly emphasises that too. So once the wine is produced from the grapes, how do they then store the wine? This is something which is slightly more difficult to tell through the ancient sources.

We know a little bit about fermentation, but when you get to cellaring, they don't discuss it as much as they do some of the other aspects. So once the wine was pressed, as it does these days in modern times, it obviously had to ferment. And there are a number of ways this could occur in the Roman era. The main way we see across Campania and in Pompeii, particularly in these large villa estates, is the use of dolia. So these huge ceramic vessels which are actually buried into the earth to keep the temperatures quite consistent. And these are often so big that you could fit a fully grown adult inside. They're absolutely enormous things. And the contentious question here is when the wine was pressed using the mechanical press or trot, was it decanted into these vessels straight

away or was it left in the collection vat for an initial fermentation period? And it's thought that at a large Roman villa further north in Italy, at Sette Finestere, that the wine underwent an initial fermentation in the collection vat before it was put into these dahlia in the channels. So this primary stage of fermentation, possibly in the vat, Pliny says it lasts nine days, a Hebrew source says it only lasts three days. And I think we can tell from this confusion in the sources or this contradiction in the sources that there were lots of external factors that came into play here. And there wasn't a regular time period that this initial fermentation

would last. And this is the same for modern production, things like external temperature, the type of yeast, the amount of sugar, what type of wine you want at the end all change this fermentation period and then once that happened and the wine was placed into the dolia they were often covered with ceramic lids or flat round stones and you can still see these in pompeii these have survived the eruption and are preserved to this day the lids that cover these huge ceramic jars for fermentation and because fermentation is such a turbulent process and produces all this gas the ancient and are preserved to this day, the lids that cover these huge ceramic jars for fermentation. And because fermentation is such a turbulent process and produces all this gas, the ancient authors even talk about how you have to remove the lids and take the froth off.

And Colley Miller says you have to do this at least once every month or once every 36 days. And we know that that wasn't the end of the process of fermentation because we get some discussion about longer fermentation periods and we can equate this to modern wine production as a secondary or slower fermentation which was more of a bacterial process and turned malic acid into lactic acid and could last for weeks or months following the initial fermentation of the wine. So as you were saying with the regional variation in wine production it sounds as if variation is also key to the storing of the wine as well. Yeah, absolutely. We know that after the fermentation had occurred, we see quite different techniques used for the cellaring and the storing of the wine. In the eastern Mediterranean, for example, places like modern Israel or even in Syria, Palestine, we see that wine was often stored in amphorae in caves.

So just in natural locations that were quite cool and were good for the wine to hang around in for months or years until it was sold or drunk. Whereas in Pompeii, we've got this fantastic evidence in one of the insula. We've got a vineyard here, we've got a wine press. And then if you go down a set of stairs underneath the vineyard, there's actually an underground room, which was the cellar. And in this underground room, they've reused a dholia, one of these ceramic jars, to connect the surface level into the cellar to provide some light and air. They've reused their own fermentation container in that way. So we've got some great evidence, which, yeah, differentiates regional methods of cellaring.

Some of the ancient authors talk about it very briefly palladius and pliny kind of say that your cellar should face the north and be away from stables and baths and trees that might influence the taste of the wine so we do have a bit of information there but other than that it's actually quite difficult to tell how wine was actually cellared in antiquity i mean it's extraordinary from what you're saying there once again how the romans seem to make use of absolutely everything during the wine process and use as much as they can. They don't want to waste anything. And you kind of mentioned earlier how Pompeian wine is, well, Campanian wine is famed across the Mediterranean. Do we have any evidence from Pompeii or elsewhere that gives us even more insight into the exporting of Pompeian wine across the Mediterranean and indeed further afield? Yeah, absolutely. We have fantastic evidence for the export of Campanian wine and even Pompeian

wine itself. I guess the best evidence here is the amphora, so the wine jars that the wine was transported and shipped in, and the stamps on the handles and the bodies of the amphora, which often say the name of either the wine producer or the trading merchant from where it came. And when we look at the distribution of these amphora, we can see them popping up in places like Gaul, so modern day France, in Bordeaux or Toulouse, in Spain, in Egypt and North Africa, even in the UK, as far widespread as that. And then I think some evidence has also been found for export as far as India for Campanian wine. has also been found for export as far as India for Campanian wine. So an incredibly widespread distribution, really showing that it was an in-demand product, that it was a popular type of wine in this Roman imperial period and republican period. We've got some evidence on shipwrecks as well. Campanian amphora have been found in imperial Roman shipwreck off the coast of Egypt,

and a republican era wreck off the coast of France so we've actually got it in situ while it was being carried and transported across the Mediterranean and it really just shows the importance of trade to a town like Pompeii as with many ancient towns and you can see this through the archaeology I guess but then when you look at Pompeii in its regional context you shouldn't really be looking at it in isolation you should be looking at the Campanian region as an economic unit which was incredibly productive you've got all the other surrounding Roman towns, Stabiae and Cumae, all forming this incredible wine and agricultural production in the Campanian region. And then I guess the scale of the villas we found outside of Pompeii is testament to this as well.

The Villa Pisanella over in Boscoreale, just a few kilometers from Pompeii, has a capacity of 50,000 liters to produce each year of wine. So really, really enormous amounts of wine being produced. Of course, of course, from what you're saying, and you mentioned some of the main cities of Campania, Cumae, I think Stabiae, I hope I said that right, and perhaps even Herculaneum. Is Pompeii a good microcosm, as it were, for understanding, on one sense, the importance of Campanian wine, but also the widespread nature of it, how far it was exported far and wide. Yeah, it is. It provides a really nice glimpse into what it might look like. We know that Pompeii is quite a typical Roman town. And of course, its preservation often leads us to think it's

a special location. But in fact, it's just your typical Roman town that we've been fortunate enough to have preserved. So I think it does, in that sense, provide a really nice case study and glimpse into just your everyday wine production in a Roman town. And then also, if you look in the broader region, what would have been happening all across the empire in these very, very fertile regions we get in the Mediterranean? So we can look at this in isolation, but then when you expand it to the broader Mediterranean region and what was happening across the whole Roman Empire, the amount of produce that they were producing is absolutely astronomical. Indeed, indeed.

And then let's head east, because you've recently been doing some research on wine production in the eastern Mediterranean, correct? Yeah, that's it. It's, I guess, really interesting to compare across regions. As I said before, wine production and probably agriculture in general did seem to be highly regionalised. There was, of course, the process of romanisation, if you want to call it that, but these conquered territories did seem to hang on to their own preferred production habits and the things that

they knew worked well in their contexts. So production in the east, while it does follow a generally similar process of wine production, it does show that there's really, really high regionalization of things like press types that were preferred or cultivation preferences that just worked better in these areas. And you can't necessarily just take from Italy and transplant into a completely different geographical climate. And so there wasn't really any broad pan-Mediterranean trends that we're seeing happening in antiquity. A really nice example is in Greece, where lever and drum presses were preferred. And even when the screw press began to be used extensively with the invention of the Archimedean screw in the first century AD,

they still kept using these lever and drum presses in certain areas just because that's what worked best for them probably. And further east, comparatively, the screw press just took over entirely and was used almost exclusively for production. If you look at things like cultivation, in Italy we see a real favouritism of trellising vines or using tree trained vines intercultivated with other crops. Whereas in Greece, in very different climatic conditions on some of the islands, vines were grown very low to the ground without stakes or trellising and were instead trained to curl around themselves, forming basket shapes, which they still do today on some of the Cyclades and the Aegean Islands. So these habits have just completely endured through the millennia. So wine production in the ancient world on the cyclades on the Aegean islands was notably different to wine production say in Pompeii? Yeah you could say that as I said the process the cultivation the treading pressing fermentation in general stayed quite similar but But then the nuances of the

press type used or the way the vines were trained and grown certainly varied greatly by region. So you could, if you're an ancient tourist, say, visiting another region, you would definitely notice differences in what was happening. And I think we can start to pick up on some of this when we do read some of the accounts of travellers that were travelling through the ancient world. Of course, so there are similarities and differences from these regions. Gotcha, absolutely gotcha there. And you mentioned the development of certain pieces of technology that seem to evolve certain regions in how they create wine. Does this really emphasise how, because of course the Roman Empire spans several centuries and the technological advancements made during that time do really influence how wine is produced in certain places of the Mediterranean.

Yeah, I think that that definitely happened to an extent. I think one of the mistakes we make when we're viewing it from a modern perspective is we try and look at these technological improvements as the Romans trying to make things more efficient or effective or something like that which is I guess a very modern mindset whereas I think we should instead look at these changes that were occurring as being what worked best in that person's particular set of circumstances I think things like the development of the screw press and where this was taken up was just simply because that was what worked best for that particular workman and it's what made their production process either more efficient or also just more practical. For example you might

get a small scale local farmer in the ancient world who might not need to invest in this comparably expensive mechanical press system because he could have just trod the grapes and produced his wine for his own family or his little town using that method. He didn't need to go to the extent that other larger producers were going to. And we do see this evidence, I guess, across the Mediterranean, where we find small basic treading floors and vats used in the fields. And you can kind of see this small scale local production happening that didn't need to rely on big technological improvements. happening that didn't need to rely on big technological improvements. But I guess we also see that when new technologies like the screw were taken up and implemented, rather than looking at it

as a more efficient process update, it's more of a thing that might improve the safety or convenience of producers in some cases. The screw press, for example, took up much less space than the lever press, so that might have been preferred in certain certain circumstances and it was also a lot easier and less laborious to use so i think the technological development that definitely happened in the roman world just needs to be nuanced through a slightly different lens and interpreted slightly differently absolutely and it's very interesting what you were saying earlier about some places like the cyclodays where we can still see them using similar techniques to what was used during the Roman period. That longevity is absolutely astonishing. It is amazing and really

until the industrial revolution and the the use of real scientific methods and hydraulic mechanisms wine production and oil production and probably agriculture in general in the Mediterranean really stayed constant up until that time from antiquity. You even, when you travel around Italy and Greece in smaller rural locations these days, you do still see it happening to some extent now. But up until that industrial revolution, it was everywhere, absolutely everywhere, the same techniques and processes that the Romans would have used themselves. That's astonishing. And when we're looking at wine production and we're looking at exports across the Mediterranean and further afield, do you think looking at ancient wine production is a good lens

through which to understand the interconnected nature of the Roman Empire? I think absolutely it is. It really, as one of the most important commodities in antiquity, clearly shows how efficient and effective the Romans were at connecting their empire. The fact that wine's among one of the Mediterranean triad with oil and grain and was essentially the most popular drink of the Greco-Roman world, I think speaks volumes to how well and important it helps us understand the Roman empire. I mean, we even hear stories of wine being preferred over water due to its alcoholic content and how it was often safer to drink and lowered the risk of illness. And the huge scale and profitability of the wine trade across the Roman Empire, I think, continues to provide further evidence of how interconnected the empire was and

how integral wine was to this process. When you see wine popping up from Turkey or Italy in England or the UK in ancient times, it just seems remarkable to me. These days you'd probably struggle to find a bottle of wine from Turkey in the UK. So the fact that it was there in ancient times really, really is astonishing. And I think also the way that the Greco-Roman colonizers traveled and implanted their own habits of viticulture into their conquered regions just continues to highlight how important wine was in all aspects of ancient life across this interconnected Mediterranean world through their sociocultural life, their economic life, their religious happenings and just simply everyday life as well.

It seems to affect all levels of ancient society and once again really interesting what you were saying there about how they may have considered wine being safer to drink than water. It just shows how valuable I guess it was in the ancient world before these health policies we had of making water safe to drink you had to rely on alcohol. Indeed there you go there you go and to wrap it all up how does all this information first from Pompeii but actually from all across the ancient Mediterranean and further afield help us understand the importance of agriculture for ancient Rome? I think to start, it's important to look at what the ancient authors tell us about agriculture. And they really say that agriculture in general, and particularly viticulture,

was a really morally worthy venture. They held it in quite high esteem, probably comparative to how we do today. And when you combine that viewpoint with the amount of data and evidence archaeologically we have for wine production and how it neatly sits into the everyday life of a fairly typical Roman town like Pompeii, I think it's quite clear that wine production and agriculture was integral to the Roman lifestyle and culture and had a really prominent role, particularly when the crops were often intercultivated and agriculture was seen as a more holistic polycultural endeavour back then rather than a monoculture like we usually find today. You start to get this really clear image emerge when you combine the evidence of the small

scale production and the larger scale enterprises and the export that was happening and the facts that they did dedicate these large tracts of important land within city walls to agriculture, it starts to emerge as a really, truly, I guess, worthy piece within the Mediterranean scene, and one that just completely underpins aspects of Roman culture and the empire. Horace, I think, one of the ancient authors, even places viticulture as one of Rome's greatest resources, and it seems to be quite clear why when you look at all this combined evidence. And then I guess when you clear why when you look at all this combined evidence. And then I guess when you start looking a bit deeper at the more obscure and difficult to see evidence

like local production and the vineyards tucked behind taverns and inns in Pompeii making grapes for their own use and for their regular patrons, you just see that viticulture and agriculture is just ingrained in all aspects and across all strata of Roman society. That's amazing what you're saying there about how we have ancient literature that really emphasises the importance

of viticulture for, I guess you could say, everyday life, but it was, as I said, ingrained in the Roman psyche. And not only for a moral sense, but also a pure economic sense. We have a handful of ancient authors saying that if you want to make money, you need to plant a vineyard and create wine because it's the most profitable venture to be involved in. As archaeology at Pompeii seems to affirm. Eminent, that was great. What is the next project in line for you? I think at this point in time, it's just trying to get back to Greece to continue my survey work with viticulture on the cyclades there. That's a project that I'm hoping to kick off again after a coronavirus pause next year. So fingers crossed I can get back over there and finish my surveys and really start to unwrap exactly how Romans were

making wine on these Aegean islands, which is a bit of an unanswered question at the moment. Brilliant. Well, we're looking forward to hearing the answer that I'm sure you'll come up with in due course. Emlyn, thank you so much for coming on the show not a problem thank you so much for having me