“1,500 years ago, the inhabitants of today’s Croatia drank Egyptian wine”, says Prof. Fabian Welc of the Institute of Archaeology at Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University (UKSW) in Warsaw, co-leading a Polish-Croatian team of archaeologists.

This is evidenced by Egyptian wine-carrying amphorae, fragments of which were discovered on the Croatian islet of Lukovac by Polish and Croatian archaeologists from a team led by Prof. Fabian Welc from UKSW and Dr Ana Konestra from the Institute of Archaeology in Zagreb.

The vessel parts found are characteristic dark brown shells with a corrugated structure and were made of clay with an admixture of golden mica washed from basalt rocks in the Abyssinian highlands.

On the island of Lukovac, which belonged to the Roman province of Liburnia, the researchers also found unique late antique fragments of fortifications. The entire site was surrounded by a defensive wall. Earlier, archaeologists discovered an early Christian church with an apse built between the 4th and 7th centuries AD, as well as a small fragment of a large water cistern and a small part of a large residential building.