Dimitri Van Limbergen
@divali.bsky.social
I am a classical archaeologist and historian specialized in the study of ancient agriculture, food production and economy, with a particular focus on all things related to wine and olive oil. My research has an outspoken holistic and transdisciplinary character, merging archaeology and history with earth and environmental sciences, and applying creative comparative perspectives across a range of disciplines and periods. I mostly work on Roman Italy and the Western Mediterranean, but I often expand my attention geographically and chronologically. On the one hand, I am interested in how human-environmental interactions in the past shaped agrarian and productive landscapes, and how these dynamics impacted wider economic and socio-political systems. For wine in particular, I have ideated and developed the approach of paleo-terroir, which deals with the close relationship between landscape, climate and man in vine cultivation strategies and wine production infrastructure. On the other hand, I also explore the fascinating link between ancient and pre-industrial crop cultivation and food production practices, and disentangle how modern ideas and perceptions have often led to erroneous interpretations of the past. As such, I have revolutionized our knowledge of Roman vineyard layout and most recently the vinification process and sensory profiles of Roman wines.
I hold a double PhD in Archaeology from the universities of Pisa and Ghent (2015), and I was a postdoctoral researcher at the latter institute from 2015 until 2023. I was a Fellow of the Academia Belgica and the Belgian Historical Institute in Rome, the Collegio dei Fiamminghi in Bologna, and the DAI in Berlin, and a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in the City of New York (BAEF) and Padova University. I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Verona under the auspices of the ArchaeoAdWine project, and a member of FOST - Interdisciplinary Historical Food Studies at the Free University of Brussels. I am an editorial board member of BABesch and the Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire, and a core member of the AWOP (Ancient Wine and Oil Presses) network, with partners in Bologna, London and Warsaw.
My latest work on Roman winemaking in earthenware vessels was published in Antiquity (2024). Recent publications include the edited books Reframing the Roman Economy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Methods in Ancient Wine Archaeology (Bloomsbury, 2024, second edition in 2025), and Vine-growing and Winemaking in the Roman World (Peeters, 2025). I am currently under contract at Routlegde to write a new introduction to the archaeology of ancient wine and olive oil. I am also a contributor to the upcoming A Cultural History of Wine in Antiquity (Bloomsbury 2024) and The Handbook of Roman Rural Archaeology (Cambridge 2025).
Phone: +32486902746
Address: Università degli Studi di Verona
Dipartimento di Culture e Civiltà
Viale dell'Università 4
37129 Verona
I am a classical archaeologist and historian specialized in the study of ancient agriculture, food production and economy, with a particular focus on all things related to wine and olive oil. My research has an outspoken holistic and transdisciplinary character, merging archaeology and history with earth and environmental sciences, and applying creative comparative perspectives across a range of disciplines and periods. I mostly work on Roman Italy and the Western Mediterranean, but I often expand my attention geographically and chronologically. On the one hand, I am interested in how human-environmental interactions in the past shaped agrarian and productive landscapes, and how these dynamics impacted wider economic and socio-political systems. For wine in particular, I have ideated and developed the approach of paleo-terroir, which deals with the close relationship between landscape, climate and man in vine cultivation strategies and wine production infrastructure. On the other hand, I also explore the fascinating link between ancient and pre-industrial crop cultivation and food production practices, and disentangle how modern ideas and perceptions have often led to erroneous interpretations of the past. As such, I have revolutionized our knowledge of Roman vineyard layout and most recently the vinification process and sensory profiles of Roman wines.
I hold a double PhD in Archaeology from the universities of Pisa and Ghent (2015), and I was a postdoctoral researcher at the latter institute from 2015 until 2023. I was a Fellow of the Academia Belgica and the Belgian Historical Institute in Rome, the Collegio dei Fiamminghi in Bologna, and the DAI in Berlin, and a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in the City of New York (BAEF) and Padova University. I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Verona under the auspices of the ArchaeoAdWine project, and a member of FOST - Interdisciplinary Historical Food Studies at the Free University of Brussels. I am an editorial board member of BABesch and the Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire, and a core member of the AWOP (Ancient Wine and Oil Presses) network, with partners in Bologna, London and Warsaw.
My latest work on Roman winemaking in earthenware vessels was published in Antiquity (2024). Recent publications include the edited books Reframing the Roman Economy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Methods in Ancient Wine Archaeology (Bloomsbury, 2024, second edition in 2025), and Vine-growing and Winemaking in the Roman World (Peeters, 2025). I am currently under contract at Routlegde to write a new introduction to the archaeology of ancient wine and olive oil. I am also a contributor to the upcoming A Cultural History of Wine in Antiquity (Bloomsbury 2024) and The Handbook of Roman Rural Archaeology (Cambridge 2025).
Phone: +32486902746
Address: Università degli Studi di Verona
Dipartimento di Culture e Civiltà
Viale dell'Università 4
37129 Verona
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Articles by Dimitri Van Limbergen
attention to the possibilities and constraints of our datasets. What emerges is a complicated picture in which it remains difficult to answer basic questions and to identify general patterns. By offering a series of thinking tools, however, the article provides a new framework for researchers to increase our understanding of the classical diet in the future.
Questo contributo si propone come una riflessione breve sul ruolo presumibilmente marginale della produzione olearia nelle Marche romane. Passando in rassegna alcuni avanzamenti chiave fatti di recente a proposito dei dati regionali sui torchi e sulle anfore, il paper offre lo spunto per una visione alternativa. L’autore si dichiara a favore di una revisione dell’oleocoltura nell’Italia centrale Adriatica romana.
prospections of the general topography and the plan of the late Republican and Imperial, rectangular gridded town. They also provide good chronological and stratigraphical evidence about the two main building phases of the gate, the development of the main East-West street and the character of the defences, with their ditch, wall and agger. The finds are an important contribution to our knowledge of the Republican phases of the coastal colony of Potentia.
Books by Dimitri Van Limbergen
Bringing together a wide array of modern scientific techniques and interdisciplinary approaches, this book provides an accessible guide to the methods that form the current bedrock of research into Roman, and more broadly ancient, wine. Chapters are arranged into thematic sections, covering biomolecular archaeology and chemical analysis, archaeobotany and palynology, vineyard and landscape archaeology and computational and experimental archaeology. These include discussions of some of the most recent techniques, such as ancient DNA and organic residue analyses, geophysical prospection, multispectral imaging and spatial and climatic modelling. While most of the content is of direct relevance to the Roman Mediterranean, the assortment of detailed case studies, methodological outlines and broader 'state of the field' reflections is of equal use to researchers working across disparate disciplines, geographies and chronologies. The study of ancient Roman wine has been dominated until recently by traditional archaeological analyses focused upon production facilities and ceramic evidence related to transport. While such architecture and artefact-focussed approaches provide a fundamental foundation for our understanding of this topic, they fail to provide the requisite nuance to answer other questions regarding grape cultivation and wine production, consumption, use and trade. As the first compendium of its kind, this book supports the embedding of modern scientific and experimental techniques into archaeological fieldwork, research and laboratory analysis, pushing the boundaries of what questions can be explored, and serving as a launching point for future avenues of interdisciplinary research.
Explore our compendium of cutting-edge methodological approaches for the future-focused study of Roman vine-growing and winemaking!
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/methods-in-ancient-wine-archaeology-9781350346642/
Preview table of contents and first chapter here: https://bloomsburycp3.codemantra.com/viewer/65721cfcf4428a00018aad0b
This volume gathers the latest research on grape growing and wine production in the Roman Mediterranean. While the approaches are cutting edge, the methods and case studies are explained well for the non-expert. Bringing together the work of both established scholars as well as more junior newcomers also means that this volume serves as an essential state of the field collection..
pressure on the land. Strategies of resource exploitation and conservation were thus essential in dealing successfully with the limited availability of these resources in the medium or long term, and to ensure the sustainability of the Roman exploitation model. This volume deals with the various ways in which natural resources were exploited and managed in the Roman world. It focuses on if, when, where and how the Romans pursued a harmonious balance between the limited availability of a particular resource and the law of supply and demand. The case studies in this volume cover various key areas of the Western Roman world – from Italy and the island of Elba, over coastal Croatia to Central-Eastern Gaul and the Pannonian limes – and discuss in particular the fi sh industry, iron smelting, deforestation and forest management, the stone trade and the exploitation of thermo-mineral resources.