Tracing the Origins of Wine in the Ancient Mediterranean

This book examines the origins and spread of wine from its earliest beginnings until the time of the Roman Empire, with a special focus on heretofore-underexamined lines of evidence.

Building upon the extraordinary body of research conducted within the past thirty-plus years on the origins and spread of wine as described by material evidence, particularly evidence gleaned from palaeobotanical and biomolecular approaches, this book expands upon that research by closely examining ancient literary and linguistic evidence. By carefully considering varying types of evidence, a fuller narrative of the spread of wine and wine culture is created than has been achieved previously. First, literary testimony from extant ancient cultures is examined to ascertain early narratives about the origins and spread of wine. Next, linguistic evidence, particularly an analysis of the history of the ’wine’ word found across the Mediterranean and ancient Near East, is considered in order to further understand issues of timing and agency related to the spread of wine in antiquity. Finally, the testimony of these lines of evidence is synthesized with current perspectives from other fields in order to paint a cohesive picture of not just how and when wine and its culture spread but also which groups played a key role.

This book is for researchers in archaeology, ancient history, and historical linguistics interested in the rapidly growing research on ancient wine.

Luke Gorton is a faculty member at the University of New Mexico, where he teaches courses on ancient Mediterranean languages, cultures, and religions. His research interests include connections between ancient Mediterranean cultures, Indo-European linguistics, Greek religion, Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity, and specific points of linguistic and cultural overlap such as the translation of the Hebrew Bible into the Greek Septuagint.