Archaeologists find well-preserved 500-year-old spices on Baltic shipwreck

LUND, Sweden -- Archaeologists say they have uncovered a "unique" cache of well-preserved spices, from strands of saffron to peppercorns and ginger, on the wreck of a royal ship that sunk off Sweden's Baltic coast more than 500 years ago. Now an excavation led by Brendan Foley, an archaeological scientist at Lund University, has found the spices buried in the silt of the boat. Photo: Reuters Lund University researcher Mikael Larsson, who has been studying the finds, said: "This is the only archaeological context where we've found saffron. LUND, Sweden -- Archaeologists say they have uncovered a "unique" cache of well-preserved spices, from strands of saffron to peppercorns and ginger, on the wreck of a royal ship that sunk off Sweden's Baltic coast more than 500 years ago. Now an excavation led by Brendan Foley, an archaeological scientist at Lund University, has found the spices buried in the silt of the boat.