2,000-year-old wine and the uncanny immediacy of the past
In 2019, construction workers in Carmona, Spain uncovered something remarkable underneath a very old house: an access shaft that led them to a Roman tomb which had remained perfectly sealed for two thousand years.
The tomb itself was striking enough: a vaulted chamber decorated with geometric patterns in red and ochre, its walls lined with eight niches for funeral urns. But it was what they found in one of those niches that would prove extraordinary. There, nestled in a lead case, sat an iridescent glass urn containing cremated remains — and five liters of a mysterious reddish liquid.
Even before they analyzed this liquid, the archaeologists (whose full report in the Journal of Archaeological Science can be read here) knew they were dealing with something special. The tomb’s preservation was remarkable. Its painted decorations were still vivid, and among its contents were pieces of Baltic amber, fragments of ancient fabric, and a crystal flask containing a perfume that turned out to be patchouli.
But a glass jar that was “filled to the brim” with an intact liquid from the age of Augustus? This seems almost impossible. And yet there it was.
