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1500-year-old Byzantine grape seeds discovered in Israel

The charred grape seeds, over 1,500 years old, found in southern Israel excavation were used to produce the “Wine of the Negev” – one of the finest and most renowned wines in the whole of the Byzantine Empire.

wine of negev

The grape seeds were found at the Halutza excavation site in the Negev during a joint dig by the University of Haifa and the Israel Antiquities Authority. According to Professor Guy Bar-Oz of the University of Haifa, director of the excavation, the vines growing in the Negev today are European varieties, whereas the Negev vine was lost to the world. “Our next job is to recreate the ancient wine, and perhaps in that way we will be able to reproduce its taste and understand what made the Negev wine so fine,” he said.

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The archeologists know of the “Wine of the Negev” or “Gaza Wine” – named for the port it was sent from to all corners of the empire – from historical sources from the Byzantine period. This wine was considered to be of very high quality and was very expensive. In earlier excavations in the Negev, archeologists found the terraces where the vines were cultivated, the wineries where wine was produced, and the jugs in which the wine was stored and exported, but the grape seeds themselves were not found.

The current excavation at the Halutza National Park, which is part of a bio-archaeological study examining the causes of the rise and fall of the Byzantines in the Negev, is directed by Bar-Oz and Dr. Lior Weisbrod of the Zinman Institute at the University of Haifa, in collaboration with Dr. Tali Erickson-Gini from the Israeli Antiquities Authority.

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Like elsewhere in the Negev, the stone buildings at Halutza- which in its heyday was the most important Byzantine city in the Negev – did not survive due to stone theft over the ages. But, as often happens in archaeological excavations, the archeologists actually found their rare finding in the refuse dump. According to Professor Bar-Oz, the city’s refuse dumps, or middens, were preserved almost completely intact and now mark the boundaries of the ancient city. They are so conspicuous they can be detected on satellite images, such as those of Google Earth. Pottery and coins discovered in the refuse indicated that they accumulated mainly during the sixth to seventh centuries AD, a time when the city was at the peak of its economic success. With the urban collapse of Halutza in the mid-seventh century, for reasons not yet completely known, organized waste disposal was stopped and it appears that both the city itself and the middens surrounding it were abandoned.

In the ancient piles of refuse, the researchers found a particularly high concentration of fragments of pottery vessels used for storage, cooking and serving, which included a significant number of Gaza jugs used for storing the ancient Negev wine. The archeologists also found a wealth of biological remains, including animal bones: bones of Red Sea fish and shellfish from the Mediterranean that were imported to the site, which indicated the vast wealth of the Byzantine city residents.

The highlight, however, were the hundreds of tiny charred grape seeds. According to the archeologists, this is the first time “Negev” grape seeds have been found, something that will provide first-of-its-kind direct evidence of the wine cultivated in the western Negev in ancient times. Exposing the tiny seeds in the piles of refuse was not easy: For the first time strict and fine excavation methods were used during the dig that included fine sifting and flotation of botanical remains, which float after the soil settles. These methods made it possible to extract the botanical finding from the Byzantine material. After washing the dirt and gently sifting the findings all that remained was to separate the botanical findings, which included seeds, pits and plants remains, from small animal bones, which included the remains of rodents that were drawn to the refuse, according to Prof. Bar-Oz.

The next stage of the study is to join forces with biologists to sequence the DNA of the seeds and in this way to discover their origin. Archeologists are seeking answers to questions related to the method by which the vines were cultivated in the Negev’s arid conditions.

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This discovery is exciting for local wine growers and for the archeologists, and they all hope to reveal the secret of the Negev vines in order to recreate the ancient wine, and by so doing, to finally understand why it was famous throughout the Byzantine Empire – in Egypt, Greece, Italy, and Spain.

The Byzantine city of Halutza, or Elusa in Greek, was founded by the Nabataeans but reached its prime during the Byzantine period between the fourth and seventh centuries, AD. The city then grew to become the largest and most important of all the Byzantine cities in the Negev. Archaeological and historical evidence indicate the wealth of the city that accommodated several thousands of people and that in its heyday included impressive public buildings such as a theater, a seminary, bathhouses and churches.

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