Archaeobotanical and chemical investigations on wine amphorae from San Felice Circeo (Italy) shed light on grape beverages at the Roman time

Louise Chassouant; Alessandra Celant; Chiara Delpino; Federico Di Rita; Cathy Vieillescazes; Carole Mathe; Donatella Magri

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0267129

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionSeptember 3, 2021
10 Nov 2021 Decision Letter - Raffaella Balestrini, Editor PONE-D-21-28574Archaeobotanical and chemical investigations on wine amphorae from San Felice Circeo (Italy) shed light on grape beverages at the Roman timePLOS ONE Dear Dr. Chassouant, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. ==============================The manuscript has been revised by a reviewer that raised a series of critical comments. Please revise the manuscript that will be sent to additionall reviewers. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 24 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. 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If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Partly ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: The manuscript presents a study of Roman wine amphorae combining chemical palaeobotanical analyses. It provides interesting insights and leads to original hypotheses about the grape juice beverages that may have been contained in the amphorae and about the vines that produced them. My advice is to publish the article with minor changes. The article could be shortened a bit and presented in a more concise form. It contains a large number of bibliographical references. The « Materials and Methods » section is lengthy and contains details that do not seem necessary, in particular in the « Archaeological context » and « Solvents » sections. The introduction is also a bit long and mainly takes the form of a historiographical presentation of the various chemical and palynological analyses of amphora contents carried out so far. For the sake of the article it would be better to have a slightly more concise introduction, not focusing so much on the methodological angle but highlighting the questions addressed by the study of the type of material and by this specific study. One of the most innovative aspects of the article certainly concerns the observations on Vitis pollens and the hypotheses that are drawn from them on the nature and origin of the vines used for the production of the beverages contained in the amphorae. However this aspect of the article deserves to be clarified. In section « Pollen » (202) it is a bit difficult to understand which pollen morphotypes can be encountered in modern vines and which are closer to the archaeologicla pollen grains. It would be good to discribe briefly the morphotypes typical of modern wild male flowers, modern wild female flowers and modern hermaphrodite domesticated varieties (female varieties if known). As it stands I am not convinced at all by your second hypothesis, the use of indigenous cultivars. Contrary to what you say, I do not think that the data you present strongly support this hypothesis. You list several indigenous female varieties. Such varieties are indeed in the minority, but they can nevertheless be found in various regions and are not specifically local. The resemblance to local Pleistocene pollens does not seem to me to be a valid argument either; or Pleistocene or early Holocene pollens from other regions should be shown to have a different morphology. If I have misunderstood your argument, I apologise and please clarify your thinking. Otherwise I think that this second hypothesis should be abandoned. - Minor comments. - Table 1 ; I don’t see how you could have 1.6% Erica from a total of 31 pollen grains. Please check all values in Table 1. - 305. Please replace « in this area since at least » by « in this area during the Middle Pleistocene ». Or else provide evidence that wild grapevine was recorded since the Middle Pleistocene. - 384-407. Third hypothesis. I would guess that Pliny refers to male wild flowers. Can you confirm that or do you have more specific information on that matter? ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. 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Revision 1
10 Feb 2022 Author Response Additionally, we would like to thank the reviewer for the important comments he reported in the manuscript. In red (in the "Response to reviewer" document), we answered and detailed the modifications we proposed. Reviewer #1: The manuscript presents a study of Roman wine amphorae combining chemical palaeobotanical analyses. It provides interesting insights and leads to original hypotheses about the grape juice beverages that may have been contained in the amphorae and about the vines that produced them. My advice is to publish the article with minor changes. The article could be shortened a bit and presented in a more concise form. It contains a large number of bibliographical references. --> Considering your remark, this is true that the publication includes a large number of bibliographical references. However, the present paper aims at combining 3 different disciplines (archaeology, botanical analysis and organic residue / chemical analysis). The number of citations required is therefore elevated to provide a concrete and well-documented work. The « Materials and Methods » section is lengthy and contains details that do not seem necessary, in particular in the « Archaeological context » and « Solvents » sections. --> The “Solvents” section was entirely removed. --> The sections “Sample preparation for chromatographic analyses” and “Gas chromatography – Mass Spectrometry” were combined. The complete extractive protocol had been recently published; hence the citation was uploaded. --> The “Archaeological context” section remains fundamental for the well-understanding of the article, specially for the archaeological consideration of the site to put in perspective the archaeobotanical results. Moreover, the archaeological details consigned in the introduction are helpful to understand the results obtained. Therefore, it seems complicated to us to shorten this section without detracting from the overall understanding of the article and the archaeobotanical results. The introduction is also a bit long and mainly takes the form of a historiographical presentation of the various chemical and palynological analyses of amphora contents carried out so far. For the sake of the article it would be better to have a slightly more concise introduction, not focusing so much on the methodological angle but highlighting the questions addressed by the study of the type of material and by this specific study. --> Considering your comment, the introduction was slightly shortened. However, the introduction is less than 160 words and aimed at detailing all of the 3 disciplines considered in the research article. A particular interest was given to highlight the interdisciplinary and innovative character from a methodological point of view since such combined studies have been rarely conducted. In these conditions, it remains complicated to shorten more the introduction without impacting its integrity. Following the PlosOne journal recommendation for the introduction, we provided the background context with a methodological angle before naming the purpose and the significance of the study. We carefully developed the problematic regarding the urging need of interdisciplinary methods to understand archaeological objects to prevent overinterpretation or misinterpretation raised by single method results. One of the most innovative aspects of the article certainly concerns the observations on Vitis pollens and the hypotheses that are drawn from them on the nature and origin of the vines used for the production of the beverages contained in the amphorae. However this aspect of the article deserves to be clarified. In section « Pollen » (202) it is a bit difficult to understand which pollen morphotypes can be encountered in modern vines and which are closer to the archaeologicla pollen grains. It would be good to discribe briefly the morphotypes typical of modern wild male flowers, modern wild female flowers and modern hermaphrodite domesticated varieties (female varieties if known). --> A sentence was added (L. 367) to summarize the different morphologies encountered. As it stands I am not convinced at all by your second hypothesis, the use of indigenous cultivars. Contrary to what you say, I do not think that the data you present strongly support this hypothesis. You list several indigenous female varieties. Such varieties are indeed in the minority, but they can nevertheless be found in various regions and are not specifically local. --> We thank the reviewer for this comment which gives us the opportunity to better explain the second hypothesis. We added a sentence as suggested (L. 384). The resemblance to local Pleistocene pollens does not seem to me to be a valid argument either; or Pleistocene or early Holocene pollens from other regions should be shown to have a different morphology. If I have misunderstood your argument, I apologise and please clarify your thinking. Otherwise I think that this second hypothesis should be abandoned. --> Reading again our second hypothesis, it is true that it was not explained clearly enough. For this reason, we made changes throughout the paragraph to mitigate the interpretation. It remains important for us to keep this hypothesis as one of the possible interpretations to the understanding of the tricolpate pollen in order to leave open a discussion on the subject since this pollen has not been reported in these conditions. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewer R2.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267129.r002
4 Apr 2022 Decision Letter - Raffaella Balestrini, Editor Archaeobotanical and chemical investigations on wine amphorae from San Felice Circeo (Italy) shed light on grape beverages at the Roman time PONE-D-21-28574R1 Dear Dr. Chassouant, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Raffaella Balestrini Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: N/A ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #2: I was invited to read the revised version of this very interesting and interdisciplinary paper (I was not a reviewer of the first version). The research adds another piece of evidence to the history of Vitis use, the discussion is in-depth, complete and takes into consideration the complexity of the disciplines, archaeological context, and botanical features. Conclusions agree with the most recent scientific evidence and are convincing. The paper can be accepted in the present form, or a bit improved by the following minor remarks. Below, I only ask for adding details about the Vitis morphology reported in the text, to avoid ambiguity. Line 137 = it is not clear in this first sentence what subspecies was sampled. Lines 203 and following: in my personal experience, all pollen from functionally female flowers of Vitis vinifera (both domesticated or wild subspecies) were observed inaperturate, that means no pores nor colpi. Maybe, this could be explained at line 207: pollen grains from female flowers of wild grapevine were observed as inaperturate pollen grains. Therefore, it is new the form found in these cultivars of aporate 3-zonocolpate pollen grains produced by female flowers. Citation 57 = add the journal? Line 210 = “the aporate morphology of Vitis vinifera was also found in pollen grains from sediments belonging to the Middle Pleistocene sediments of Rignano Flaminio” = do you mean ‘aporate’ as inaperturate rounded pollen (as in my experience of wild subspecies) or ‘aporate 3-colpate’ ? Line 275 = the identical aporate grains are tricolpate? The chapter ‘content of the amphorae’ is very interesting and articulated: maybe of interest to subdivide it into subchapters, especially to outline better the presence of most information from historical sources. Anna Maria Mercuri ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #2: Yes:** Anna Maria Mercuri https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267129.r003
Formally Accepted
12 Apr 2022 Acceptance Letter - Raffaella Balestrini, Editor PONE-D-21-28574R1 Archaeobotanical and chemical investigations on wine amphorae from San Felice Circeo (Italy) shed light on grape beverages at the Roman time Dear Dr. Chassouant: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr Raffaella Balestrini Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267129.r004

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