By Steven Scarpa, Associate Director of Marketing and Communications
Peabody museum scientist Andrew Koh plans to unravel ancient mysteries by combining a deep understanding of classic texts with the latest scientific technology.
Koh’s venture, the Yale Ancient Pharmacology Program (YAPP), has built an unconventional research apparatus that could alter the archeological landscape and transform the study of the ancient world. “Our work has the potential to open new horizons for our understanding of the past,” Koh said.
Koh and his team are currently working with colleagues from Harvard University, the University of Toronto, the Institute of Classical Studies at the University of London, and the British School at Rome as they excavate the ancient town of Falerii Novi, located 30 miles outside of Rome. People lived in the town from at least the 3rd century BCE through the 12th century CE. The site contains many of the elements found in a Roman city: walls, gridded streets, a theatre, temples, housing blocks, and a forum.
Researchers Margaret Andrews of Harvard University and Stephen Kay of the British School at Rome outside Falerii Novi, an ancient Roman town. Photo courtesy of Margaret Andrews.
The town’s ordinariness is what makes it fascinating to archaeologists. There are no imperial monuments to gawk over or palaces to distract. Falerii Novi, surrounded by the same wall for over 2,000 years, provides the rare opportunity to find out how the average Roman citizen lived.
“Our project is invested in moving away from the narratives about monumentalized architecture and elite patronage that have so often dominated the discussion of ancient urbanism in Italy,” said Seth Bernard, a University of Toronto Classics professor working alongside Koh. “The site’s value comes from the fact that its archeology is accessible and diachronically extensive.”
The researchers discovered tall jars which might have been used to ship locally made wine or olive oil. So, they’ve asked Koh to unlock the chemical signature of what might be in the amphorae by conducting organic residue analysis (ORA), his specialty. By integrating ORA with other kinds of evidence, including textual sources and inscriptions, Koh and YAPP access data that is not attainable through the usual methods.
“ORA provides tremendous insight into the diet and economic connections of people who have been overlooked by our elite written sources,” said Margaret Andrews, a Classics professor at Harvard.
Bernard agrees. “Having a connection to Andrew, he was the natural choice to add this component of knowledge to our project,” he said.
The valley near Helicon, where Koh and his colleagues have been studying plants believed to be connected to ancient Greek rituals. Photo courtesy of YAPP.
Koh’s work in Italy is his most recent venture back to antiquity.
Over the past several summers, he has traveled to Greece, using ancient texts as the start of his search for new discoveries. YAPP recently collected thermal UAV scans that seem to verify a lost temple complex near Delphi in Greece, offering an opportunity to uncover residue samples from one of the few untapped holy sites in the ancient world. The Temple of Isis, or Iseion, at the heart of the complex was an important site in Greek worship. Plants likely used in ceremonies there can still be found in the region. The program’s research team will attempt to match the chemical signature of extant plant species with the residues they hope to find on ceramics uncovered within the temple.
“The data locked inside this unassuming hilltop could open a path towards understanding the rites of a religion that sought answers to our most enduring questions, laying the foundations for medicine and, perhaps, Christianity,” Koh said.
Those healing rituals transformed Central Greece into a religious and medical hub. The traditions cultivated there spread throughout the region and likely influenced rituals performed at Christian catacombs in Rome centuries later, Koh explained.
The Yale Ancient Pharmacology program hopes to analyze materials gleaned from "The Pope's Pharmacy," an ancient apothecary dating back centuries. Photo courtesy of YAPP.
The chemical key to understanding all of this might be in an ancient Benedictine apothecary. “The Pope’s Pharmacy,” taken in its entirety in 1936 from the Basilica di Saint Cecilia in Trastevere, has been preserved at the Vatican Museum. Koh is working closely with museum curators to propose a comprehensive study of its contents and archives.
He hopes to document the chemical composition of the ancient plants and compounds still in their jars, potentially revealing forgotten treatments prescribed for centuries. He believes this remarkable collection could transform our understanding of pharmacology and guide YAPP’s work for years.
“We will find residues in the decorated apothecary jars that derive from, and thus illuminate, the chemical fabric of elixirs and psychoactives served at ancient sites like Falerii and the Iseion,” Koh said.
For centuries, archaeology has privileged the object over its contents, Koh said. “This approach has kept the field speculating over what these vanished societies produced and consumed,” Koh said.
YAPP is growing. Koh and his team are in the process of raising funds to increase their research capacity and develop new technology for use in the field. “The wisdom of these ancient people and the secrets held within the substances they prized are within reach,” Koh said.
Peabody museum scientist Andrew Koh doing research in the field in Greece. Photo courtesy of YAPP.