Lin Foxhall. Olive cultivation in ancient Greece: seeking the ancient economy.

Lin Foxhall. Olive cultivation in ancient Greece: seeking the ancient economy. LIN FOXHALL. Olive cultivation in ancient Greece The term ancient Greece refers to the periods of Greek history in Classical Antiquity, lasting ca. 750 BC[1] (the archaic period) to 146 BC (the Roman conquest). It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the foundation of Western Civilization. : seeking theancient economy. xviii+294 pages, 66 illustrations, 8 tables. 2007.Oxford: Oxford University Press; 978-0-19-815288-0 hardback 65 [poundssterling]. There are works of synthesis which summarise, from the most recentpublications, the state of knowledge reached in a given subject. Theseare useful enough guides through the dense jungle of modern publishing.But there are others, with a real project and thrust: this is the caseof Foxhall's volume, a work which expounds her vision of olivecultivation in Archaic and Classical Greece Classical Greece, the classical period of Ancient Greece, corresponds to most of the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. (i.e. from the fall of the Athenian tyranny in 510 BC to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC). . [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The fruit of 30 years of research, which includes documentary studyand fieldwork in the region of Methana in the Argolid, these 294 pagespublished by Oxford University Press in 2007 re-place Greek oilproduction in context. The author, who often takes up positionscontradicting those of previous researchers, presents a tightly arguedcritique: not only of the interpretation of the rare survivingdocuments--emphasising that they only give partial insights into theholdings of rich landlords--but also of the available archaeologicalevidence. She rightly takes issue with the over-interpretation of thepresses of Klazomenes, the only archaeological remains of an oilproduction site of the end of the Archaic period The name Archaic Period is given by archaeologists to the earliest periods of a culture. In particular, it may refer to: the Archaic period in the Americas (8000 BC–1000 BC) the Archaic period in Greece (1000 BC–500 BC) , showing that there areno traces of a rotary crusher and demonstrating that the presses havebeen incorrectly reconstructed. She is similarly critical about theresults of surveys conducted in southern Argolid and in the demos ofAtene in Attica, which leads her to conclude that very few remains ofpresses can be attributed to the sixth-fourth centuries BC. The increasein oil production, previously inferred from these results, seems, atbest, much exaggerated. After exposing how ideology and assumptions,such as the application of modern economic concepts or the use of moredetailed Latin sources to explain Greek oil production, have skewed theviews of a number of previous authors, and after eliminatingcontroversial interpretations, Foxhall presents her own theories,briefly summarised here. Given the social and cultural conditions of Archaic and ClassicalGreece, underlined with great accuracy by the author, olive trees couldonly have been cultivated in small numbers, even on large estates. Theirproduce served mainly domestic needs and only in good years could therehave been a surplus for sale. Mills and large fixed presses weretherefore not necessary on ali exploitations, perhaps not even on alithe great estates. Rudimentary installations and equipment would besufficient, as the lack of power could be compensated by greaterinvestment in time and labour, notably slave labour slave labour, slave labor (US) n → trabajo de esclavosslave labourn → travail m d'esclave;it's just slave labour (fig . This would explainwhy presses with domed crushers (Roman trapeta) only appear during thefourth century BC; it is thus not surprising that they were missing fromthe lists of goods confiscated after the scandal of the mutilation MutilationSee also Brutality, Cruelty.Mutiny (See REBELLION.)Absyrtushacked to death; body pieces strewn about. [Gk. Myth.: Walsh Classical, 3]Agatha, St.had breasts cut off. [Christian Hagiog. ofthe Hermes statues in Athens at the end of the fifth century BC. Thesecrushers only appear during the fourth century BC in Macedonia and inChersoneses which are regions of intensive cultivation and largeestates. The farm of Argilos, which had been the property of a member ofPhilip's entourage and which contained a superb mill, is emblematic em��blem��at��ic? or em��blem��at��i��caladj.Of, relating to, or serving as an emblem; symbolic.[French embl��matique, from Medieval Latin embl of this time and region. Foxhall takes the argument further, suggesting that presses wereboth transportable and multi-purpose, being used for wine as well as oilproduction or other industrial purposes, and this up to the Romanperiod. This point of view, and one she reiterates several times (pp.132, 138, 184), is, however, not grounded in textual sources orarchaeological evidence. This leads to some re-interpretations: forexample that the Boston Museum skyphos is not of unknown function but awine press as she wrote herself long ago (p. 135), or that the pressfrom Street 5 in Delos is specifically for wine production and that itis Late Roman in any case (p. 162). Such multi-functionality would, bara few exceptions, contradict most of the historical and ethnographictradition. Nevertheless, the author's point, emphasised severaltimes, merits further consideration and should inform furtherarchaeological investigations. Another point of contention is the typeof crushing which Columella Columella(Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella) (kŏl'yəmĕl`ə), fl. 1st cent. A.D., Latin writer on agriculture, b. Gades (now Cádiz), Spain. described as involving 'canalis etsolea'. Granted, the interpretation as a trough in which the oliveswere crushed with wooden clogs is not certain, but it is not as unlikelyas Foxhall would have us believe, since it is a method which was stillin use in Corsica in the eighteenth century and in Spain in thenineteenth century. And let us leave aside the low relief from thePalazzo Rondanini, since I have demonstrated that the scene depictedthere refers to wine making, not oil pressing. My criticisms, and there could be more, are nevertheless minorcompared with the many insights the author offers. Amongst them: thatolive oil olive oil,pale yellow to greenish oil obtained from the pulp of olives by separating the liquids from solids. Olive oil was used in the ancient world for lighting, in the preparation of food, and as an anointing oil for both ritual and cosmetic purposes. in Archaic and Classical Greece was not a cash crop; thatolive trees were cultivated for domestic purposes, which could be quiteimportant in large households; that the trees were planted not onterraces gained from marginal land but on good soil, generally locatednext to arable land In geography, arable land (from Latin arare, to plough) is an agricultural term, meaning land that can be used for growing crops.Of the earth's 148,000,000km2 (57 million square miles) of land, approximately 31,000,000km2 (12 million square miles) are ; that oil, used in quantities in food, care of thebody and lighting, was produced without great expense; that crushing wascarried out most often by stone rollers and that pressing was done insmall presses operated by levers, which could be dismantled and wereperhaps used for user purposes. Foxhall's book deserves a more detailed review than there isspace for here. Suffice to say that this original work, matured overtime, is based on a deep knowledge of Greece and its olive production. JEAN-PIERRE BRUN Centre Jean Berard, UMS (Unified Messaging System) See unified messaging. 1797 CNRS-Ecole Francaise de Rome, Napoli, Italy (Email: berard@unina.it) Translated from the French by Reviews Editor