a 2,200-year-old Roman ship shows how ships were patched up during long voyages

It is about the Ilovik-Paržine 1 shipwreck, which was discovered in 2016 off the island of Ilovik in the Adriatic. According to preliminary research, it was a Roman Republican merchant ship of about 20-22 metres in length, built using mortise-and-tenon technology and carrying amphorae of wine and timber; its last voyage is attributed to the 2nd century BC, around 170-130/120 BC.

Details

In the new study, the scientists focused not on the cargo or the hull, but on the ship's protective coating - the material that was used to coat the ship to keep it from leaking, rotting and suffering less from seawater and pest organisms. The authors emphasise that such organic materials have long been largely unexplored, even though they were critical to seafaring.

Analyses of ten samples showed that the coating was based on softwood resin - pine tar or pitch. But one of the samples was different: it contained a mixture of tar and beeswax. Researchers attribute it to an ancient mixture known as zopissa, which was used in antiquity to make coatings more flexible and easier to apply.

The most interesting part is that the coating turned out to be heterogeneous. The scientists concluded that the ship had at least four or five different "batches" of the protective layer. The stern and the central part were covered with one material, while in the bow part several layers were different. This was the main argument in favour of the fact that the ship had been repaired several times, probably at different times and in different places in the Mediterranean.

An additional clue was provided by pollen trapped in the tar. It points to different types of landscapes, from Mediterranean coastal thickets and pine forests to wetter coastal zones and even mountainous areas of the north-eastern Adriatic. The authors believe that some of the coatings may have been applied in the area around Brundisium, today's Brindisi in Italy, and some may have already been applied on the northeastern Adriatic coast, closer to where the ship eventually sank.

Why it matters

This work shows that ancient ships were not "disposable" vessels for a single voyage. They were repaired, re-lubed, and adapted to new sections of the voyage. That is, the ship can be read not only as a means of transport, but also as a document of maritime logistics, maintenance, and long-distance navigation technologies in the Roman era.

Furthermore, the study shows that even small traces such as tar and pollen can tell us about routes, repair sites and local shipbuilding traditions in the Adriatic. The authors explicitly note that without such analyses, seeing this "repair history" would be almost impossible.

Background

Previous studies had already linked the ship to the Brundisium area by its ballast composition, and the new study adds data on protective coatings to this picture. Together, they show that Ilovik-Paržine 1 was not a localised ship, but a participant in a wider maritime movement across the Adriatic.

Source

The study is published in Frontiers in Materials in 2026 under the title Adhesive coatings in naval archaeology: molecular and palynological investigations on materials from the Roman Republican wreck Ilovik-Paržine 1 (Croatia).