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A Roman Catholic - era shipwreck on the Spanish Mediterranean island of Mallorca was carrying a load of highly prized fish sauce when it sank around 1,700 age ago , a novel study finds .
The Ses Fontanelles wreck lies in shallow urine a few hundred feet from the beach near Les Meravelles , a resort Ithiel Town about 4 miles ( 6 kilometers ) southeast of Palma , the working capital of Mallorca ( also spelled Majorca ) , where it was give away after a storm in 2019 .
The Late Roman shipwreck lies in shallow water only a few hundred feet from a popular beach on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca.
Previousarchaeological studiessuggest the ship develop from or near the Spanish port of Cartagena — acknowledge as " Carthago Spartania " to the Romans — but sank because of unsung circumstances in the fourth century .
The latest study , bring out March 21 in the journalArchaeological and Anthropological Sciences , report the most elaborated analysis of the shipwreck yet . It divulge that many of the 300 sealed pottery jug , or amphora , in the ship ’s freight contain Pisces sauce made from anchovy — a daintiness known in Latin as " liquamen . "
It ’s unusual to line up such a well - preserved shipwreck from this menstruation , said study lead authorMiguel Ángel Cau Ontiveros , director of the University of Barcelona ’s Institute of Archaeology and a inquiry prof for ICREA , the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies .
The ancient shipwreck is remarkably well preserved and contains more than 300 amphorae that were being used to transport a cargo of fish sauce, olive oil and wine from the Spanish mainland.
" It is the only former Roman shipwreck we bang of so far from the country of Carthago Spartania [ and ] one of a few from the quaternary century in the Mediterranean , " he told Live Science .
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Roman wreck
Because the crash lies in shallow pee — an average of roughly 8 understructure ( 2.4 m ) below the surface — it was difficult to investigate amid the wave crash near the shore . " It makes thing very complicated when the sea is slenderly act , " Cau order .
He thinks theremarkable preservation of the wreckand its many constituent detail — which would usually rot forth chop-chop — was probably because the ship was straightaway buried by sand and other sediments after it drop down .
In addition to the amphora , archaeologists found rope , skid , a wooden drill and constitutive " dunnage " or mat , made from vine shoots and grass , that was used to protect the ship ’s hull from the payload , Cau said .
Many organic items have survived — unusually for such a shipwreck — including the dunnage of vine shoots and grass packed around the cargo to protect the wooden hull.
Many of the amphora still contain residues of the substances they declare ; and the latest study used gas chromatography and other analytic methods to make a shot of Mediterranean trade in the quaternary century , he said .
Many of the amphorae contained the remnant of Pisces the Fishes sauce , while others held oil from plants — probable olive , wine-colored , and perhaps olive preserve in acetum . The classifiable amphorae for different products were labeled with painted inscription known as " tituli picti " in Latin , he said .
" The front of so many paint dedication on the amphorae make us mean that this was a common drill , " Cau tell .
Researchers say the fourth century shipwreck gives a rare snapshot of trade in the Mediterranean during the Late Roman period.
Precious cargo
premature study find that many of the oil amphora had stamp stump with a " Chrismon , " or Christian monogram — similar to theChi - Rho symbol of Constantine — which suggest they may have been marketed by a church sureness , Cau aver .
In another key discovery , the wooden " stride " link up the mast to the hull was come up to hold a coin from Roman Siscia ( in modern - day Croatia ) , in line with R.C. ritual for blessing a ship . The coin was made during the reign of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great and fix the earliest possible date of the ship as A.D. 320 .
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" This matches well with all the archeologic written report of the materials reclaim in the excavation that suggest that the boat sank around the mid - fourth century , " Cau said .
The ancient Romans were big lover of fish sauce and enjoyedseveral different types . The most famous may be " garum , " which seems to have been a sumptuousness product made from fermented Pisces the Fishes innards ( guts ) and blood , but " liquamen " seems to have been made from whole fish .
The archeological analysis found fragments of Pisces bones in some of the amphora from the Ses Fontanelles wreck , which indicated the " liquaminis flos " they were labelled as holding — Latin for liquamen " flower , " which may have think of " dear liquamen " — was made mostly from anchovies but contained some Sardina pilchardus .
