ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL STUDY OF LYKION COMPLEMENTED BY IR AND RAMAN SPECTROSCOPIC INVESTIGATION

The present study explores issues of production, distribution and application of Lykion, a renowned and widely used medicine of the ancient world, by synthesizing literary archaeological and scientific evidence. Lykion has astringent and antimicrobial properties and was used to cure various skin and several other dis-eases. Miniature vessels have been characterized by researchers as carriers of medicinal and/or cosmetic sub-stances; amongst these, a special category distributed in various areas of the Eastern Mediterranean and South Italy bear inscriptions or stamps identifying Lykion as the vessels’ content and sometimes provide the name of the manufacturer as well. A comparative study of their typology with their unlabelled counterparts indicates similarities in terms of their content and use. The unlabelled examples are mostly characterised as vessels of storage and transportation of an alternative non-certified medicine produced by using a local plant variety with similar medicinal properties. In the latter case, the shape of the container could signal both the place of origin and the content. Hitherto analytical investigations that would confirm the validity of this hypothesis had yet to be conducted. The present research attempts, for the first time, to trace evidence regarding the content of 15 published ceramic vessels whose biconical and pear-shaped shapes are mostly associated with this particular medicine. The assemblage under study was excavated in ancient Abdera, a coastal city in West-ern Thrace, Greece. In order to investigate any absorbed content into the ceramic matrix of these vessels, 42 samples were extracted from their inner unglazed walls. The powder samples were then analysed by the com-plementary Infrared (IR) and Raman spectroscopies and consequently compared to spectra acquired from certified Greek plant varieties. Here we have detected remnant which bear similarities with the spectra of the species Rhamnus lycioides.