Olives have been essential to life in Italy for at least 6,000 years – far longer than we thought
- Written by: Emlyn Dodd, Senior Lecturer in Classical Studies, Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London; Macquarie University
How far back does the rich history of Italian olives and oil stretch? My new research, synthesising and reevaluating existing archaeological evidence, suggests olive trees have been exploited for more than 6,000 years. The first Italian olive oil was produced perhaps 4,000 years ago.
The olive was central to ancient life in Italy. Wild and domesticated olives provided edible fruit. By the mid-first millennium BCE into the Roman period, olive oil was used in cooking, medicine, ritual and hygiene.
Table olives are rich in calories, lipids, vitamins and minerals, and high in calcium. Olive wood is dense, and was used in crafting, construction and for fuel. The waste from pressing olives (pomace) was also a remarkably popular domestic and industrial fuel source in antiquity, burning at a higher temperature for longer and with less smoke than charcoal.
Uses of the olive tree and its fruit were diverse.
During the early Roman Empire (around the first century CE) it is possible Rome’s immediate hinterland produced 9.7 million litres of olive oil per year.
Today, Italy remains among the top olive producing regions in the Mediterranean.
A deep history of olive exploitation
Evidence from ancient pollen shows that olive trees were present in Italy during the Pleistocene, more than 11,000 years ago. These were likely wild olives.
In order to think about exploitation and cultivation, it is important to discern human interaction with the plant and its fruit.
Olive tree charcoal, suggestive of human exploitation, has been found in Mesolithic layers from the seventh and sixth millennia BCE (8,000 years ago) in Sicily and Apulia in the south of Italy.
In northern Italy, the Arene Candide cave in Liguria revealed olive charcoal along with quern stones and sickle blades, possibly used for rudimentary olive harvesting and processing. People at this time began to shape the landscape of wild olive trees by using wood for fuel, collecting wild fruit or pruning off branches for fodder.
An exponential increase in evidence occurs in the Neolithic (6000–3500 BCE), hinting at more intensive use of the olive tree.
But our earliest olive stones, which provide more convincing evidence of olive fruit consumption, are not found in an occupation context until the Middle Neolithic (around 5000–4000 BCE). Much of this early material comes from Calabria, Apulia and Sardinia, with only limited glimpses in central Italy and the Veneto.
Despite accumulating evidence, no conclusive signs yet exist for the Neolithic production of olive oil in Italy.
The earliest olive oil in Italy?
Organic residue analysis has detected plant oils, perhaps from olives, in an Early Bronze Age (2000 BCE) large clay storage jar (pithos) from Castelluccio, Sicily. But there remain challenges in our ability to discern between different types of oils using this technique, and preservation in the Mediterranean is rarely ideal.
More potential indicators for olive oil have been found in ceramic storage jars from Broglio di Trebisacce, Calabria, and Roca Vecchia, Apulia, in the mid-second millennium BCE.
The Bronze Age also saw olive cultivation expand into marginal lands where the wild olive did not grow, for example at Tufariello, Campania, around 1700 BCE. There was clearly significant interest in the exploitation of olives in Bronze Age Italy, which likely included the production of oil at least on a small scale.
Iron Age developments
Italian regions experienced different trajectories around 1000 BCE. Parts of southern Italy show declines in olive cultivation, perhaps linked to changing economic and cultural events. Sites on the Ionian and Adriatic coast maintain olive charcoal, stones, oil residues and even imprints of olive leaves on ceramics.
Possibly the earliest stone rotary olive millstone in the Mediterranean was discovered at Incoronata, Basilicata, dating to the seventh century BCE.
The invention of rotary mills signalled an important change in processing power and efficiency. Mills crushed olives, separating skin from flesh before they were pressed for oil. Although they are generally thought to originate in the Aegean, where examples from the sixth and fifth centuries BCE exist, the find from Incoronata might instead suggest a central Mediterranean origin.
Reconstructed stone rotary olive mill (trapetum) originally from Boscoreale, now at Pompeii.
Heinz-Josef Lücking/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
Recent research demonstrates external cultures, like Phoenicians or Greeks, were not solely responsible for the introduction of olive cultivation or oil production. This follows similar conclusions reached for viticulture and winemaking in Italy.
Cultural exchange through trade and colonisation brought different knowledge, technology and ideas of production around oleiculture and oil production, creating forums for local innovation.
These forces energised already-intensifying cultivation. By around 600–500 BCE, Etruscan communities began to play a key role in the systematic establishment of groves and the use of olives in central Italy.
Roman consolidation and scaling up
The Roman period saw olive cultivation pushed well past its natural bioclimatic limits. Olive trees were grown at higher altitudes, latitudes and in more arid regions.
Production occurred across much of the Italian peninsula, even in subalpine regions and marginal lands.
Archaeological and ancient environmental material illustrate a substantial oil-producing habit and emerging market in Roman Republican and Imperial Italy – perhaps on a larger scale than previously thought.
Some oil production facilities may have had four or more presses. This illustrates exceptional processing scale, such as the elite villa of Vacone in central Italy.
A facility in Apulia, used from the first century BCE onwards, had an oil cellar with perhaps 47 enormous clay jars (dolia), potentially storing 25,000–35,000 litres.
Oil production also occurred at a smaller-scale in urban centres and isolated rural locations. The discovery of a production site at Case Nuove, Tuscany, provides a rare glimpse into modest scale olive processing using rudimentary technologies.
As analytical and scientific techniques improve, the ancient history of olive oil in Italy will continue to evolve, pushing our knowledge further back in time and adding new detail and nuance.
Authors: Emlyn Dodd, Senior Lecturer in Classical Studies, Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London; Macquarie University
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