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“This is important because this is the way traditional wine is made in Georgia,” he said. “So this would suggest perhaps the technology had developed back then.”

The absence of charred grape seeds, commonly found at ancient winemaking sites, remain a mystery for the archeologists though, the study says. It also means they are unable to determine the variety of grapes used in the wine.

“Seeds by themselves, they are organic, so they will disappear in the archeological record,” Batiuk said. “The ones that are preserved for us, especially going all the way back to the Neolithic, these will be charred and, once they are turned into charcoal, they can survive much better.

“You could easily just say, ‘well it’s because they never actually exposed them to fire, so that’s why we don’t have any of them,’ but that is kind of a tough argument to make because there is always accidental firing of these things,” he added. “That is especially if you are pressing the grapes out afterward … frequently enough people will toss them out in the fire and that will usually preserve some of the seeds.”

Batiuk said the winemaking could have started where the grapes were grown, with the product then transported to villages for the fermenting process. He suspected the grapes could have grown in the wild in the nearby hillsides, an area he said his team plans to excavate next year.

He noted that the future excavation may yield new evidence of winemaking in the hillsides that could predate the current study.