Diary Of An Archaeologist - Wattys 2019 Non-fiction Winner

That Time I Found 400-year-old Wine

It's a question I almost get as much as 'what do want to eat?': What is the best thing you've ever found?

My answer? Wine. 17th-century wine to be precise.

And no, I'm not an alcoholic. I swear. Damn it, this doesn't make me sound very convincing.

Let me start at the beginning. A little historical context, the Dutch Golden Age is a period in time, spanning the 17th century, in which the Dutch Republic's art, science, military and trade were all among the most acclaimed in the world. Yes, after the Eighty Years' War with Spain, this tiny country without a monarchy became one of the biggest players in the world. It's an incredibly interesting period in time.

Well, when I got the chance to work on the excavation of a 17th-century trading ship I jumped at it. One of the pros of living on what was once the bottom of the ocean, is that sunken ships can be found on land.

This particular ship lay on a stretch of land that was about to be turned into an apartment complex, so the ship had to be removed entirely to be able to place the foundation for the complex. And that's where we as archaeologist came in. We made our plans, did our field survey for the excavation, got our crew together and started digging the first ditch in the spring.

Sadly for us, it was a rainy spring that year. Like, very rainy. I think I soaked through at least 3 raincoats and 5 waterproof fishing pants. Yeah, you don't look charming at all on any kind of excavation, but on a rainy one, you're just a human blob of waterproof clothes, trying to stay dry and warm.

Now, on the bright side, the water helped to keep the ships wooden planks in shape. You see, when excavating wood that lies in a layer of peat its important to keep the exposed wood wet. Especially if the material is waterlogged.
Waterlogged means the wooden material has been preserved in wet soil, like peat bogs, for such a prolonged period of time that all the deteriorated elements of the wood are filled with water.

The wood has basically absorbed the water like a sponge.

But as soon as you expose waterlogged wood to air, it will evaporate the excess water, resulting in surface tension, and causing the wood to weaken or collapse due to the shrinkage.

So, you can imagine that merely standing on the ship's deck was extremely dangerous. Which is why we could only be in the ditch with two or three people at a time, and most of our team would be on the edge. Handing their colleagues the equipment and instructing them on what to do.

From the edge, you had a much better idea of where on the ship you were and what you had to look out for. If you were in the ditch, which I often was, because I was one of the lightest people among the crew, you were knee deep in muddy waters — desperately trying to keep your balance without breaking through the planks beneath your feet.

We wore safety gloves, so we wouldn't cut our hands open on the iron nails or other sharp objects. But because of the muddy water, and the constant rain, it was like working with a blindfold on. You couldn't see what was in that water; you could barely feel it. It was incredibly hard.

So, I was super happy once all the deck's planks were removed and all that remained was the ships hull. All the planks were marked, examined, measured and registered, because once the entire ship was out, it would be preserved and put back together, plank by plank, to become a magnificent display in a museum.
But at that moment in the excavation, it meant I was standing in the hull of the ship, with solid ground underneath, and no more risk of falling through.

I hit the jackpot once I found myself in the kitchen area of the ship. You see ships in that time had a fireplace in a kitchen, yes, with open fire. And the fireplaces on Dutch ships had these beautiful Delfish Blue tile wall behind them. These tiles could tell us when they were made, giving us a time frame for when the ship was made.

Sadly, the tiles were not preserved as nicely as we had hoped. They lay in sharts all throughout the kitchen area, mixed with the sharts of smoking pipes of which we found so, so many. It became a running gag to answer with 'must be another pipe' if someone said they found something in the muddy waters.

So, when I was finishing up on the fireplace of the kitchen and the side of my foot hit something, I got the 'it must be a pipe' answer from my colleagues. But I knew this was no pipe. It was far too big to be a pipe. Without losing contact with the object, I moved myself over to where I felt it in the water.
With my safety gloves on I tried to move my hands through the water, but I couldn't make any distinction between mud and other textures through the thick material of my gloves. Still, I was positive my boot had touched something, so against the instructions of the senior archaeologist I took off my gloves and tried again with my bare hands.

This time I could feel the hump of clay or mud that had formed in the hull of the ship, but there was something in the hump. With my touch as my only guidance, I could make out what felt like the bottom of a glass bottle. I cheered, calling out to my colleagues that I had a glass bottle. Our first bottle of the excavation.

I believe the senior archaeologist ordered me to immediately put on my safety gloves because the glass would most definitely be broken, but I ignored him. Refusing to take my hands from the bottle.
I was afraid that once I would pull my hands out of the muddy water, I wouldn't be unable to find it again. So, very carefully I scrapped the mud away from the glass with my fingers. The further I got into the mud pile, the more I could feel of the bottle's distinct round belly and its long neck, all perfectly in tact. Mind you, I still couldn't see the bottle through the water, but I described every detail I felt to my colleagues who became more excited by the prospect of finding an artefact in such a good condition.

By now, they were shouting instructions at me about how to pull the bottle out of the mud. Too slow and the pressure of my hands could break the glass. Pull it out too quickly, and the glass could break because of the sudden pressure change.
Break it, and I would ensure the wrath of the rest of the team. You know, no pressure or anything.

I held my breath as I slowly but steadily pulled the bottle out. As soon as I got that irisated glass from the water, I felt like I had just found the holy grail.
The wine bottle was not only in perfect condition, but it was also still sealed and through the green glass you could see the wine swirling inside — 17th-century wine.

Not the rain, nor the cold, nor the fact that my boots had sucked themselves stuck into the mud, nothing mattered anymore. I had my wine bottle, my perfect bottle, and that was all that mattered. My colleagues had to come free me from my boots because I would not, for the life of me, let go of that bottle. Not until me, and my bottle were safely out of the rain.

It's safe to say that, that wine bottle was the best find of the entire excavation. To find one bottle perfectly intact, like the wine was just poured into it yesterday while the rest of the ship's contents was all shattered to pieces, was a small miracle.

Later in a lab, the senior archaeologist had extracted some of the wine through the cork for examination, but other than that the bottle remained untouched.
The wine is still in there to this day, and I always smile every time I see that bottle on display in the museum.  

This is what the bottle looked like. It's also known as an Onion bottle, because of the onion-like shape.

A/N: As always thanks for reading. Feel free to vote or comment, and I love to hear your thoughts.

-Next time I'll talk about that time some tried to break into the house I shared with three other archaeologists, why? Find out Wednesday!-