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> The most logical solution to this mystery, however, is that Roman artists were attempting to represent pinecones!

I’m not sure that “Romans didn’t know how to draw pinecones” is really the most logical solution.

The unopen pinecone of the stone pine looks quite like in the mosaic, actually, and is the one to get pine nuts out of.

Also, pineapples are called that because they look like pinecones (and perhaps especially those pinecones).

I was going to agree with you, noting that it’s in a basket of fruit (with an offering of foods) but humans have used Pine nuts for food since prehistoric times (per Wikipedia). It seems the simplest explanation–it’s not that Romans didn’t know how to draw pinecones, but that a particular Roman had a hard time representing a pinecone in a mosaic.

> that a particular Roman had a hard time representing a pinecone in a mosaic

It's too bad nobody hired him to represent pineapples, though, because he would have done a great job.

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