Sticky residue inside bronze vessels present in an underground shrine in Paestum, southern Italy, has been recognized as honey. A brand new technique of research recognized the substance 70 years after it was found, contradicting earlier analyses and confirming the speculation of the archaeologists who first excavated the shrine.
Paestum was an vital Greek colony based in 600 B.C. on the Tyrrhenian Coastline close to what’s now Salerno. It’s famed for its three nice Doric temples (devoted to Hera, Athena and Neptune) courting to between 550 and 450 B.C. and in higher situation than a lot of its brethren on the Greek mainland.
The vessel was found in 1954 in a heroön close to the Temple of Athena. , Relationship to round 520 B.C., the shrine consisted of a tumulus inside an oblong enclosure confronted by giant stones. The excavation of the tumulus uncovered a pitched limestone roof over an underground chamber. The chamber contained eight bronze vessels — six hydrae (water jars) and two amphorae — with spectacularly adorned handles and one black determine amphora made in Athens. The pots had been organized round an empty iron mattress, representing the presence of a deity, or extra possible, the founding father of town who had died a century earlier than the shrine was constructed.
Residue of a thick, paste-like substance had been discovered contained in the vessels with traces of it on the outside indicating it had initially been a liquid. The substance had a waxy scent and archaeologists on the time thought it was an providing of a honeycomb, an emblem of immortality in Greek mythology, of which solely the beeswax had survived. This was contradicted by scientific testing, nevertheless. Three completely different laboratory analyses on completely different samples of the substance — the primary take a look at a couple of years after excavation, the second in 1970, the third in 1983 — excluded honey. No sugar was ever discovered; the residue didn’t dissolve and water and its fatty acids recommended it had contained animal and/or vegetable fat.
One of many bronze hydrae and a big chunk of residue had been loaned to Oxford College’s Ashmolean Museum in 2019. The museum was in a position to carry out a brand new investigation of the residue’s composition utilizing a mixture of spectroscopy, excessive decision chromatography and mass spectrometry analyses.
They discovered that:
- The traditional residue had a chemical fingerprint almost similar to that of recent beeswax and fashionable honey, with the next acidity stage that was according to adjustments after long-term storage.
- The residue’s chemical composition was extra advanced than that of the heat-degraded beeswax, suggesting the presence of honey or different substances.
- The place the residue had touched the bronze jar, degraded sugar blended with copper was discovered.
- Hexose sugars, a typical group of sugars present in honey, had been detected in larger concentrations within the historical residue than in fashionable beeswax.
- Royal jelly proteins (identified to be secreted by the western honeybee) had been additionally recognized within the residue.
These outcomes counsel that the traditional substance is what’s left of historical honey. Nevertheless, the researchers can’t exclude the chance that different bee merchandise can also be current.
“Historical residues aren’t simply traces of what folks ate or supplied to the gods — they’re advanced chemical ecosystems,” explains [research team leader Luciana] da Costa Carvalho. “Finding out them reveals how these substances modified over time, opening the door to future work on historical microbial exercise and its doable purposes.”
The outcomes of the scientific analyses have been revealed within the Journal of the American Chemical Society and could be learn right here.
