Dimitri Van Limbergen

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).

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).