SRI LANKAN CONNECTION

The port town of Mantai in northwestern Sri Lanka, a nexus for the spice trade, flourished between 200 BC and AD 850. A recent study of ancient plant remains reveals traders from all corners of the world, including the Roman Empire, may have visited or even lived there. Eleanor Kingwell-Banham, an archæobotanist at University College London, has found an abundance of locally grown rice grains, but also more exotic products: charred black pepper dating to AD 600–700 and a single clove from AD 900–1100, which must have made quite a journey: about 7,000km (4,350 miles) from its native home in the Maluku Islands of Indonesia.

The team also found remains that could link the port city to the ancient Mediterranean world – processed wheat grains dated to AD 100-200 and grape seeds dated to AD 650800. Neither crop can grow in Sri Lanka’s wet, tropical climate, so they had to be imported, possibly from Arabia or the Roman world. The chemical isotopes absorbed by the plants should determine where they were grown; but no matter their precise origin, the coexistence of rice and wheat is evidence of Mantai’s cosmopolitan cuisine. The discovery of wheat and grapes shifts the focus on goods transported from South Asia to the Roman world, to goods that went in the other direction. So were there Roman merchants living in Mantai, importing and cooking the foods of their homeland? “It’s certainly a possibility,” says historian Matthew Cobb. But no one has yet clinched the case with Roman ceramics. sciencemag.org, 12 Dec 2018.