Scientific approaches to ancient wine: developments, challenges and future perspectives

This introductory chapter outlines the remit and purpose of this book as one designed to survey current methods and approaches, especially those building new trajectories in the study of ancient viticulture and viniculture. We demonstrate the major progress made in methods and tools during recent decades and the potential this holds to balance our knowledge of wine-related activities that are more clearly visible archaeologically and those that are ephemeral and have long gone underrepresented in scholarship. Following an extensive, methodologically themed bibliographical overview of the state of the art, we outline the structure and rationale for this volume and summarize key chapters, which are grouped thematically. Finally, we discuss future directions and challenges for the field, including limitations in perspective generated by a focus on, for example, amphorae or production installations, and a need to draw together and synthesize data from often-disparate scientific methodologies.