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Coarseware vessels from excavations at Isthmia, Greece, in contexts dating from the Hellenistic and Roman periods, resemble ceramic beehives used by the ancient Greeks and still in recent use on the Cycladic islands and Crete. Chemical investigations of absorbed residues were performed with the aim of obtaining direct evidence for the use of these vessels as beehives. High-temperature gas chromatography (HT-GC) and HT-GC/mass spectrometry (HT-GC/MS) were used to screen lipid extracts for the presence of compounds characteristic of beeswax. Samples of beeswax taken from a 19C ethnographic beehive was used as reference material. Potsherds from 10 pithoi recovered from the same Isthmia excavation served as controls. A significant proportion of the sherds from the putative beehive vessels contained compounds, i.e. n- alkanes, wax esters, fatty acids and long-chain alcohols congruent with those seen in the reference beeswax. δ 13 C values were determined for the individual components of the lipid extracts and reference beeswax by means of compound specific GC-combustion-isotope ratio mass spectrometry (GC-C-IRMS). On the basis of the molecular structures, carbon number distributions and δ 13 C values 16 of the 40 sherds studied were shown to contain residues of beeswax. None of the pithoi contained beeswax residues although two yielded residues consistent with degraded triacylglycerols. |
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