Woodland exploitation and Roman shipbuilding

Abstract

Several ancient wooden shipwrecks, harbours and submerged sites have frequently been found in the Mediterranean Sea, especially in France and, subordinately, in Italy. These discoveries are important in ancient maritime, economic and naval history studies as well as in vegetation history and biogeography. This work presents the results obtained from wood analysis of a ship for harbour service found in the sediments of the Neapolis harbour (southern Italy) dated to the boundary between the i and ii centuries AD. A multiproxy approach enabled correlation between timber taxa and pollen data, obtained from the coeval sedimentary layers, in order to constrain the ship provenance and the timber exploitation areas. Timber/pollen comparison suggests that, most probably, the timber used for ship building was of local origin. Moreover, even if a more accurate selection and a preference for softwood were adopted for planking elements, a good relationship was observed between technological properties and functional role of the wooden elements. Woodland exploitation seems to have been rationally carried out, with a good compromise between the quality of the ship, wood availability and the ease of supply. The supplying takes place not far from the shipyard, from tree growing as well as from wild forests. It is noteworthy to underline the hypothesis of Cupressus sempervirens and may be of Juglans regia tree plantation for timber production, the wider diffusion of Abies alba in the surroundings of Neapolis, with respect to the present, and a major diffusion of the Pinus nigra group in Campania.