The archaeobotany team from the Biodiversity Conservation Centre (CCB) of the University of Cagliari has discovered the oldest grape culture and the origins of viticulture in Sardinia. To date, the archaeobotanical and historics data have ascribed the merit to the Phoenicians and then to the Romans had introduced domestic grapes in the western Mediterranean, but the discovery of a grape grown from Nuraghic rewrites, not only the history of viticulture in Sardinia but the entire western Mediterranean.
Thanks to collaboration with the Superintendency for Archaeological Heritage for the provinces of Cagliari and Oristano, and the discovery of 15000 Vine seeds in nuragic site of Sa Osa (Cabras, Or), dated with carbon-14 as dating back to about 3000 years ago, heyday of Nuraghic, it was possible to find out that viticulture as we know it today was also known to our ancestors.
The discovery is the result of over 10 years of work carried out on the characterization of indigenous varieties of Sardinia and on the archaeological seeds coming from the excavations directed by archaeologists of the Superintendency of Cagliari University. The results came thanks to the innovative technical analysis of a computed image developed by researchers at Ccb in collaboration with the Consortium of Granicoltura Experimental Station for Sicily.
The analysis uses special mathematical functions that analize the shapes and sizes of seeds (grape seeds), by comparing morphometric data of archaeological seeds with current cultivars and wild populations of Sardinia, this has allowed us to discover that these ancient seeds had belonged to the cultivated varieties. Not only: the archaeological seeds showed a parental relationship also with the wild vine that grows wild on the island.
The old vine discovered in Sardinia seems to belong to the white grape varieties, in particular shows the relationship with the varieties of vernacce and malvasia grown properly in the areas of central-western Sardinia. Currently the research group is continuing the investigation and is deepening the research also on the materials found in other archaeological sites and on other species cultivated since the Nuraghic Age.