| The olive was one of the most important plants of the ancient Near East, and olive oil was the petroleum of antiquity. Olive oil was highly valued for a wide variety of purposes: food, illumination, religious ceremonies, crafts and industry, and especially as a major component of perfumes. This research focuses on the complex issue of olive oil processing and the technological changes in the ancient olive oil industry during the expansion from small scale domestic to large scale industrial processing during the Chalcolithic through Iron Ages (≈4,300--586 B.C.) in Syro-Palestine. The ultimate goal was to see if processing methods can be determined based on their olive remains. In order to accomplish this, a methodology for doing these studies was organized. The methodological component included: (1) ethnographic research investigating how traditional olive oil processing affects olive remains, and how those remains are incorporated into the archaeological record, and (2) experimental studies to determine how different processing methods might affect olive remains. The experimental and ethnographic results were applied to olive remains from an archaeological site to determine the processing technology used at the site. The result was that it is possible to determine an olive oil processing method based on the olive remains recovered from a site. The methods used in this study can be applied to other paleoethnobotanical remains and technologies. I have also exposed potential problems which should be considered when doing such research, and have raised questions concerning interpretation of remains from archaeological sites. |
