Ilovik-Paržine 1: Pollen Reveals the Roman Ship’s Voyages

For 2,200 years, a dark coating attached to the hull of a Roman ship preserved far more than timber from water. Microscopic pollen grains became trapped in the sealant, enabling scientists to reconstruct where the vessel was built, the landscapes through which it sailed and how many repairs it underwent before sinking off the Croatian coast.

How was the shipwreck discovered?

Known as Ilovik-Paržine 1, the merchant vessel was found in 2016 in Paržine Bay, beside the Croatian island of Ilovik. The ship went down around 170 BC, during the Roman Republic, and lies at a depth of roughly four metres, only 30 metres from shore.

Excavations by Croatian and French archaeologists uncovered well-preserved sections of hull, ballast stones, logs and fragments of amphorae. These containers carried goods including wine and olive oil, showing that the vessel took part in the busy trading networks linking Mediterranean and Adriatic ports.

Why did the hull retain so much information?

To keep out water and limit harm caused by marine organisms, ancient shipbuilders spread adhesive substances over the timber. Chemical testing of Ilovik-Paržine 1 identified mainly a substance made by heating conifer resin or wood, most likely pine.

One sample also contained beeswax combined with the pitch. This mixture made the coating more pliable and easier to spread. Texts attributed to the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder refer to a similar preparation, called zopissa, which was used to protect and maintain ancient vessels.

How did pollen reveal the ship’s journeys?

While the coating remained hot and sticky, airborne particles settled and became embedded on its surface. The researchers combined molecular analysis, pollen studies and statistical methods to separate different applications that appeared almost identical when assessed only through their chemical composition.

The identified environmental traces included:

• Pollen from olive and hazel trees in Mediterranean landscapes;
• Signs of pine and holm oak found in wooded areas;
• Remains of alder and ash linked to wetter regions;
• Particles from beech and fir trees originating in higher-altitude areas;
• Plant combinations associated with different locations around the Adriatic.

Each group acts as a signature of the vegetation near the place where the material was prepared or applied. By comparing these signatures, scientists can propose the regions visited by the vessel and distinguish its original coating from layers added during its working life.

Watch the video shared by the YouTube channel Grands Sites archéologiques, featuring accounts of Ilovik-Paržine 1 recorded on the seabed.

The ship underwent several repairs

The study, published in Frontiers in Materials, identified between four and five separate batches of coating on the hull. The arrangement of the layers points to interventions at different times, particularly around the bow, providing rare physical evidence that ancient merchant ships were maintained during extended voyages.

The findings indicate that much of the coating was made or applied near Brundisium, now Brindisi in southern Italy. Earlier ballast analysis had already connected the ship’s possible construction site to this important port. Other layers seem to have been added at different points along the Adriatic coast.

A coating became a logbook

The research does not identify every stop with the precision of a modern map, but it turns a material once regarded as secondary into a historical source. The hull records building methods, available natural resources, the movement of knowledge and everyday care that rarely feature in written records from antiquity.

Ilovik-Paržine 1 demonstrates that even a layer of pitch can preserve a vessel’s memory. Investment in protecting shipwrecks and carrying out further analysis is urgent, as invisible particles may reveal routes, trades and human decisions that have remained underwater for more than two millennia.