“I’ll Drink to That!” Everyone Loved Wine in Bronze Age Troy, New Study Finds

Homer’s Iliad is a problematic text. On the one hand, it tells us of a time before the Bronze Age Collapse in the twelfth century BC, a lost era before the Greek palaces burned and the survivors of catastrophe forget, for centuries, how to read or write.

Such resources detailing this world are few, and Homer’s is without a doubt the finest record of this ancient time. On the other hand, it is clearly a work of fiction, at least in part.

Gods and monsters roam the world of Homer’s Mediterranean, heroes murder soldiers by the dozen. We don’t even know if the Trojan War ever happened, and picking the accurate detail from the rhetorical flourishes can sometimes be a challenge.

However there is much to be learned from these epic tales, and one such detail concerns the depas amphikypellon. This cylindrical goblet with two curved handles is mentioned in the Iliad and examples were found by the 19th century archaeologist (and vandal) Heinrich Schliemann during his excavations of what he believed to be Troy. It is a neat link between the archaeology and Homer’s tale.

Such vessels were often thought to be used for drinking wine, a practice believed to be common among the elite of Mycenaean Greek society. And this was indeed recently confirmed in a study published in the American Journal of Archaeology: acids derived from fruit have been found inside such goblets: they were indeed wine cups.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Similar analyses conducted on a wide range of cups and beakers from the ruins of Schliemann’s Troy have also been shown to contain the same fruit acids. Not withstanding the meanest and lowest rough-hewn drinking cup, all seemed to be used for drinking wine.

Not only were many of these more primitive drinking vessels found to contain wine residue, their location further reinforces the idea that these cups were not used by the elite. They were found in areas associated with the common population of the great city, outside the central citadel of Troy.

This challenges the idea that wine drinking was enjoyed only amongst the elite, or for ritual reasons only. It seems instead that everyone in Bronze Age Troy enjoyed drinking it; what a party that must have been.

More work needs to be done to confirm the full extent of wine drinking amongst the population of Troy. But at the moment it seems that we will need to totally re-evaluate our understanding of wine production, distribution and consumption in the Bronze Age.

If it isn’t just the elite, there must have been an awful lot more of it around, for a start. Wine cultivation is not an easy process, which is partly why we thought only the elite would have access to it.

As it happens, Troy is in a region well suited to wine production which may mean it is only a local phenomenon, a surplus to be enjoyed by the entire population. However it is clear what needs to happen next: we need to start looking inside the cups and beakers of other Bronze Age cultures. Was everyone drinking wine?

Header Image: Examples of the depas amphikypellon found near Schielmann’s Troy. Source: Internet Archive Book Images / Public Domain.