Traces of Fatty Acids from a Byzantine Sounding Lead Recovered off the Israeli Coast

Fatty acids, typical to large herbivores, were isolated from a 7th century Byzantine sounding lead recovered from a shipwreck off Dor, an ancient anchorage in Northern Israel. The fatty acids survived by being sheltered in an anaerobic environment provided through a site formation process induced by the disintegrating wreck. Previously established identification criteria for fatty acids, absorbed in ceramics, were used to show that tallow was used in this navigational instrument in the Eastern Mediterranean during late antiquity.