Deep in an island in Greece, archaeologists stumbled upon a remarkable discovery—a 3,600-year-old site that was once the hub for producing the ancient world’s most coveted color: purple dye.
Ancient ruins found on the island of Aegina, off the coast of mainland Greece, unveiled two superimposed buildings dating back to the 16th century B.C.
The older building was identified as a purple dye production site from the Late Bronze Age based on findings published in the journal PLOS ONE.
During the Late Bronze Age, colored dyes held significant value in the Mediterranean, shedding light on the cultural and trade dynamics of that era.
In the process of making purple dye, crushed marine snails, particularly the mucous glands of specific sea snail species, played a pivotal role. These seafaring creatures secreted the essential purple pigment.
Arriving at the desired hue required a meticulous method of mixing snail glands with saltwater and letting them steep in controlled containers or vats that regulated oxygen and light exposure for optimal color production.
Aegina, though modest in size, made a lasting mark on the Aegean Sea’s cultural tapestry over millennia, hosting settlements dating back to the Neolithic Period and beyond.
Archaeologists spotted evidence of a purple dye workshop in the Bronze Age eastern suburb of Kolonna, deducing its existence from an abundance of purple pigment traces on pottery, snail shells, and tools used in the dye-making process.
Chemical analyses revealed that the workshop primarily utilized a specific marine snail species, the banded dye-murex (Hexaplex trinculus), to craft the revered Tyrian purple dye.
The magenta hue of Tyrian purple, a product of painstakingly extracting pigment from thousands of marine snails, was so precious that it outranked gold in value during the Roman era, reserved for the elite and even legally restricted to the Emperor’s use at times.
Initially attributed to the Phoenicians—a seafaring civilization based in present-day Lebanon—Tyrian purple found its home in Tyre, Lebanon, one of the Mediterranean’s ancient dye production hotspots.
The recent Kolonna excavations also uncovered charred remains of young mammals, perhaps sacrifices offered in a protective or ritualistic manner to safeguard the dye workshop.