杏吧原创

TRACES of resins and oils from ancient pottery are revealing the secrets of
traders who plied the Mediterranean more than 3000 years ago.

Ceramic containers known as Canaanite jars are found all over the eastern
Mediterranean. They were made between 3500 and 2100 years ago. For years,
archaeologists believed the jars were exclusively used by traders to transport
wine.

However, in 1983, divers discovered a late Bronze Age shipwreck at Ulu Burun
off the south west coast of Turkey. The ship contained over a hundred Canaanite
jars, many containing a plant resin extract from Pistachia trees,
similar to myrrh.

Now a team led by Carl Heron, a chemist at the University of Bradford, has
shed new light on the riddle of the jars. Using gas chromatography and mass
spectrometry, Heron told the BA that his team can identify the chemicals a jar
used to contain鈥攅ven if no traces remain on its surface. The researchers
scrape away 0.1-gram samples of pottery, crush them and analyse the powder to
reveal the substances that soaked into the ceramic millennia before.

Heron鈥檚 team has studied Canaanite jars from Egypt, which archaeologists have
determined were used during the rule of the pharaoh Akhenaten around 3350 years
ago. 鈥淢any of the jars obviously carried the same kind of resin found in the
shipwreck,鈥� says Heron. 鈥淗owever, our studies also clearly indicate that many of
the jars and contents had been heated.鈥� The researchers believe that the resin
was used as an incense, with the jars doubling as containers and burners.

Other jars seem to have contained oils such as moringa oil, a nut extract
that was used in cooking and in the manufacture of cosmetics. 鈥淭his project is
only a year old and we鈥檙e already getting exciting results,鈥� says Heron.

Heron hopes that further chemical analysis will reveal where the raw
materials that were used to make the jars came from.