Phoenician wine press discovered

Reconstruction of the wine press from the 7th century BC (Image: O. Bruderer, with the kind permission of the Tell el-Burak excavation project)

They brought the wine – the famous traders of antiquity made the “special” drink popular in the Mediterranean, they say. A find in Lebanon documents where and how the Phoenicians produced wine. The wine press, which is over 2600 years old, also provides insights into its advanced construction technology: the Phoenicians used a liquid-resistant plaster. The special technique for producing this screed mortar was later further developed by the Romans, say the archaeologists.

Wine became a symbolic drink of antiquity: In the first millennium BC. According to numerous finds, the consumption of fermented grape juice spread in many regions of the Mediterranean. In the success story of wine culture, the Phoenicians are assigned an important role. The inhabitants of the coast of the eastern Mediterranean developed in the early 1st millennium BC. BC to successful seafarers and traders who established trading posts and new settlements in many areas of the central and western Mediterranean. The most famous of these is Carthage. With this expansion came the spread of the Middle Eastern traditions of wine culture.

Remains of the wine press at the site. (Photo: Tell el-Burak excavation project)

Find in a Phoenician settlement

Despite this assessment of the Phoenicians as key players, hardly any traces of wine production in the Phoenicians’ area of ​​origin, which also included parts of today’s Lebanon, were known. This has now changed with the finds in the archaeological site of Tell el-Burak. There, archaeologists from the University of Tübingen, together with Lebanese colleagues, discovered the remains of a Phoenician settlement from the late eighth to the middle of the fourth century BC. Exposed. The settlement was probably founded to supply agricultural products from the nearby city of Sidon.

Tell el-Burak was bordered to the southwest and southeast by a 2.5 meter wide terrace-like wall. “We discovered a well-preserved wine press south of one of these walls. It was built on the slope of the hill, ”say the archaeologists. As their investigations showed, the system consisted of a basin in which the grapes were trodden, a connecting channel through which the must flowed and a vat in which the must was collected and possibly kept for the first fermentation process. Earlier research in Tell el-Burak had already shown that large areas of grapes were grown in the vicinity of the settlement. “We assume that wine was made there on a large scale for a few centuries,” the authors write.

A wine press made from refined building material

It is known that wine was of great importance to the Phoenicians – they used it in religious ceremonies in addition to everyday consumption. “The new discovery thus provides numerous clues as to how the wine pioneers made the drink,” says first author Adriano Orsingher from the University of Tübingen. The earlier discovery of a large number of amphorae, which were used as transport vessels in antiquity, also indicates that the Phoenicians traded the wine. “The nearby city of Sidon was on sea trade routes in the eastern Mediterranean,” says Orsingher. It is therefore obvious that the wine was transported from there to the Mediterranean area.

As he and his colleagues further report, the current archaeological discovery has a further meaning: Analyzes of the lime plaster that was used in the construction of the wine press highlighted the high level of the material used at the time. “It is difficult to produce a good quality lime plaster,” emphasize the authors. The Phoenicians developed this technique further by using recycled ceramic shards to make the material. This made it possible to build more stable and better at the same time: “The plaster was water-resistant and hard-wearing. The Romans later adopted this technology for building construction and developed it further, ”say the scientists.

Source: University of Tübingen, specialist article: Antiquity, doi: 10.15184 / aqy.2020.4

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