Probably Hispana, Senicio and the other four inhabitants (two men and two women of unknown names) of a roman tomb of Carmona discovered in 2019, they never imagined that what for them was a funeral ritual would end up being relevant 2000 years later because … another reason. As part of that ritual, the skeletal remains of one of the men were submerged in a liquid within a funeral urn of glass.
This liquid, which over time has acquired a reddish tone, has been preserved since the 1st century AD. C. and a team from the Department of Organic Chemistry of the University of Córdoba, led by professor José Rafael Ruiz Arrebolain collaboration with the Carmona City Council, has identified it as the oldest wine discovered to datethus replacing the Speyer wine bottle, discovered in 1867 and dated to the 4th century AD, and which is preserved in the Historical Museum of Pfalz (Germany).
“At first we were very surprised that liquid was preserved in one of the funerary urns,” explains the municipal archaeologist of the Carmona City Council Juan Manuel Román. Not in vain, they had passed 2,000 years; but the conditions of conservation of the tomb, which had been preserved intact and well sealed during all that time, is what has allowed the wine to maintain its natural state and that other possible causes such as flooding or leaks inside the chamber or condensation processes are ruled out.
The challenge was to verify the suspicions that the research team had: that this reddish liquid was wine or, rather, that at another time it was wine because it had already lost many of its essential characteristics. To do this, they resorted to a series of chemical analysis, carried out at the Central Research Support Service (SCAI) of the UCO and published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Report. They studied the pH, the absence of organic matter, the mineral salts, the presence of certain chemical compounds that could be related to the glass of the urn or the bones of the deceased, or their comparison with current wines from Montilla-Moriles, Jerez or Sanlúcar. Thanks to this they had the first indications that the liquid was wine.
But the key to its identification was given by the polyphenols, biomarkers present in all wines. Thanks to a technique capable of identifying these compounds in very low quantities, the team found seven specific polyphenols which were also present in wines from Montilla-Moriles, Jerez or Sanlúcar. The absence of a specific polyphenol, syringic acid, has served to identify the came as white. Despite this, and that this typology of wine agrees with bibliographic, archaeological and iconographic sources, the team clarifies that the fact that said acid is not present may be due to degradation due to the passage of time.
What has been more difficult to determine is the origin of wine, since there is no sample from the same period to compare. Even so, the mineral salts present in the liquid from the tomb are consistent with the white wines that are currently produced in the territory that belonged to the ancient province of Bética, especially with those of Montilla-Moriles.
A gender issue
The fact that the wine covered the skeletal remains of a man it’s not by chance. The women In ancient Rome they had for a long time forbidden to taste wine. It was a man thing. And the two glass urns in Carmona’s tomb are an example of the gender division of Roman society and funerary rituals. If a man’s bones were immersed in wine along with a gold ring and other worked bone remains from the funerary bed in which he had been cremated, the urn containing the remains of a woman did not have a single drop of wine, but it did contain three amber jewelsa perfume bottle with the scent of patchouli and remains of fabrics whose first analyzes seem to indicate that it would be silk.
The wine, as well as the rings, the perfume and the other elements were part of a funerary trousseau that would accompany the deceased on their journey to the afterlife. In ancient Rome, as in other societies, death had a special meaning and people wanted to be remembered to, in some way, stay alive. This tomb, actually a circular mausoleum which probably housed a family with high purchasing power, was located next to the important road that connected Carmo with Hispalis (Seville)and marked with a tower (now gone), to facilitate that purpose.
Two thousand years later, and after a long time in oblivion, Hispana, Senicio and their four companions have not only been remembered again, but have also offered a lot of light on the funerary rituals of ancient Rome, also allowing the liquid to be identified. of the glass urn like the oldest wine in the world.
