Archaeologists from Siena University and botanists from the University of Milan aim to reconstruct the DNA of the vines that the Etruscans and their ancestors used to make wine.
The project is financed by a local bank until 2007. It seeks to recreate lost varieties of vine, to preserve traces of forgotten subspecies and to shed light on the evolution of the plant, botanically and geographically, over the past 6,000 years.
The research covers southern Tuscany and northern Lazio. It involves examining vines on Etruscan archaeological sites. Vines, presumably direct descendants of those cultivated by the ancients, are compared with wild vines with which humans are thought never to have come into contact.
Andrea Zifferero and Andrea Ciacci, two of the Siena archaeologists working on the project, said they hoped to increase the number of varieties available for experimentation and development of new types of vine.
The other key element are the ancient pits, or grape seeds, found on archaeological sites. They can provide useful pieces for the historical puzzle of vine cultivation.
Milan botanist Attilio Scienza said: "There are two main schools of thought - one that vine cultivation and wine-making spread westwards from Asia Minor during the 3rd and 4th millennia BC; the other that at the same time there were parts of Spain and Italy in which this happened independently. We hope to discover at least some of the answers."