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Chapter 5 examines the cultivation of the olive tree. Oil was universally consumed and was a critical fuel, medicinal base, and lubricant. The characteristics of olive production are described and the regions where surplus production was most often realized are investigated.

Chapter 8 details the trade in those products discussed above. As the conditions that rendered surplus production not only likely, but integral to the functioning of the late antique economy, the chapter turns to explore the scale and significance of that trade. Quantitative study based on ceramic finds is supplemented by textual sources that detail the sustained trade in grain, wine, and olive oil that flourished in overseas commerce and allowed large cities to sustain themselves.

This chapter examines the intensity and organisation of wine and olive oil production in the suburbium of Rome, by analysing the distribution of 169 oil and wine presses in the region. The density of presses suggests that oil and wine production in the region was considerable, and confirms that a significant proportion of the wine and oil consumed at Rome came from the surrounding hinterland. The lack of amphora evidence suggests the products were transported to Rome in skins. The suburbium of Rome, in addition to pastio villatica, and market gardening of fruit, vegetables and flowers for the city of Rome, appears also to have been involved in intensive viticulture and even olive cultivation. Together with the chronology of the sites this casts doubt on the idea of a crisis in Italian viticulture under competition from the provinces; Rome absorbed a large proportion of Italian surplus.

This chapter extends the analysis of oil and wine presses as indicators of capital investment in agricultural crop processing to three areas with large-scale production facilities: Gaul, Iberia, and the Black Sea. The analysis of sites with multiple presses, as an indicator of investment in very large-scale production, reveals different investment chronologies in the three areas, and in Gaul, a different investment pattern between wine and oil. The chronology of multiple-press installations in the three regions shows that a peak in the second century, and in all regions the decline in the fourth century is steep. The cumulative known installation dates for the press facilities indicates that the peak in investment in the creation of multi-presses occurred in the first two centuries of the empire; in both Spain and the Black Sea region, this is paralleled by the development and peak of the fish-salting industry.

This chapter presents a sponge cake recipe with a Mediterranean twist. The classic sponge cake calls for a mixture of nearly equal parts flour, sugar, eggs, and butter, each of which plays a role in the development of the textural and sensorial elements characteristic of the sponge. In the Mediterranean-style recipe, extra virgin olive oil is used as a substitute for butter. An attempt is also made to further enhance the sponginess of the sponge; that is, maximize its final volume by placing the batter in a whipped-cream dispenser, or syphon, which is then pressurized with nitrous oxide. This effectively introduces thousands of tiny bubbles into the batter without the need for beating, thus maximizing the final volume, smoothness, and lightness of the sponge. Xanthan gum, a natural thickening agent, was also introduced to help prevent gas escaping from the sponge. The syphoned olive oil sponge cakes were highly successful among tasters, who acknowledged both their smoothness and sponginess.

This chapter examines the literary, archaeological, and epigraphic evidence for economic and social change in North Africa during the Roman period. The evidence for the increased exportation of African ceramics to sites around the Mediterranean from the late second century AD onwards is discussed in relation to transformations observable in the rural countryside. Traditional explanations for the African economic boom are brought up to date, with recent survey work reinforcing the picture of the development of large-scale farms producing olive oil and wine, but also highlighting the importance of other North African exports, such as textiles and marine products. Explanation for the later economic prosperity is sought in the system of exploitation which developed after the destruction of Carthage, indicated by the mass centuriation schemes known from aerial photographs, the post-Gracchan epigraphic Lex agraria of 111 BC, and the tenurial relationships attested on the inscriptions of the Bagradas Valley.

The principal foods of the ancient Israelites during the thousand years from 1200 BCE to the second century BCE were like those of other Mediterranean peoples. Grains, wine, and olive oil were the three primary staples (the Mediterranean triad), and these were augmented by dairy products, fruits and nuts, and meat. It was difficult to produce food in the rocky soil and dry climate of ancient Israel, and a central belief in the Hebrew Bible is that the supply of food is contingent upon Israel’s obedience to God’s laws. In the Hebrew Bible, food is a subject of divine law. Religious and cultural factors marked some foods and food mixtures as taboo and inappropriate for a “holy nation.” Specific permitted foods were imbued with symbolic importance. These symbolic foods and ancient practices provide the template for later Jewish ways of consuming food, using food in worship, and addressing ethical ideals.

Discussions of daily life in the Roman army almost invariably focus on the duties performed by soldiers, on the changing of the guard, the detailing of patrols, and the on-going cycle of training. Recently there has been some attempt to consider life off-duty, but still the minutiae of everyday life are overlooked. To appreciate better the impact of life in camp on individuals, and the degree to which individuals were themselves able to transform their environment, this chapter looks beyond formal structures to examine mundane routine as represented by the use of key artefacts in military installations. Ancient writers recognized the way that consumption associated soldiers with Rome in the eyes of outsiders, and defined their particular niche within provincial society to insiders. The chapter examines some of the most essential elements, from objects associated with notions of personal hygiene to those indicating distinctive foodways.

Chapter 3 discusses economic change in Italy. It investigates economic activities carried out by the Italians independently from Roman interference. Many Italians were quick to take advantage of the possibilities offered by their association with Rome, such as the opening up of new markets for Italian products and safer sailing because of Roman control of the Mediterranean. These economic activities had important consequences for economic developments in Italy itself: many far-reaching changes took place in the third to first centuries, such as changes in settlement patterns and an increase in the scale of agricultural production. Nevertheless, not every change that occurred after the Roman conquest should be ascribed to the conquest itself. The second part of chapter 3 investigates the economic and cultural developments that occurred in four sample areas, in order to trace the level of economic integration as a result of macroeconomic developments in Italy.

The evolution of Iberian society cannot be understood without an emphasis on the encounter with colonial cultures, Phoenician and Greek, that established colonies along the Mediterranean zone of the Iberian Peninsula. Their presence and their actions were transformative, definitively affecting the structure of indigenous communities of the region. Not least among these changes to consider is the evolution of the production of vegetal resources during the Iron Age in the region, which appears to have progressed from an economy of cereal products to an expansion of vineyards and later of olive trees. The production of wine seems to be one of the distinguishing elements of Phoenician colonization. This chapter presents recent evidence documenting long-term changes in the agrarian base of indigenous societies before and after the arrival of Phoenician and Greek colonists. In particular, it examines important new data concerning the development of indigenous wine and olive oil production and discusses the relationship of these practices to traditional grain-based agriculture. It also explores the impact of colonization on the traditional cultivation of cereals and legumes.

This chapter studies the commercial networks through which maritime traders on foreign soil connected with the global world of business. Using French and Flemish settlers in Seville in 1620, it deconstructs Seville’s status as a ‘proto-global economy’; examines the trade activity on the Dunkirk-Seville route; the textile trade; and case studies of prominent merchants in the region in attempt to determine the role of foreign merchants in the trade network between American and Europe. It concludes that despite laws preventing foreigners from participating in American trade, networks built from social, familial, political, and economic frameworks made such trade possible.

The donkey was domesticated from the African wild ass in Northeast Africa some 7–6,000 years ago. This chapter looks at what happened when donkeys turned right and exited Africa into Asia. Though tracking their movement as far as India and China, its principal focus lies in the Ancient Near East, the region stretching from Israel north to Turkey and eastward into Iraq and Iran that is often termed the ‘Fertile Crescent’. Within this vast area, donkeys were used in daily life, including the agricultural cycle, just as they were in Egypt. But like there they also acquired other, more specialized uses and associations. Thus, after tracing the donkey’s spread I look at its role in three key aspects of the Near East’s earliest civilizations: the organization of trade; the legitimization of kingship; and religion. By 3500 BC the earliest cities had already emerged in Mesopotamia, the ‘land between the rivers’ Euphrates and Tigris. Over the course of the next 1,500 years, urbanization gathered pace across Palestine and Syria in the west, northward in Turkey, and east through Iran. Within Mesopotamia the independent Sumerian city-states of the south developed increasingly monarchical forms of government, seeing brief unity under the kings of Akkad and the Third Dynasty of Ur in the late third millennium BC. Then and later a city-state pattern of political organization also held in northern Mesopotamia (for example, at Aššur and its neighbour Mari) and in the Levant. In the mid-second millennium bc, however, much larger kingdoms emerged: the Hittites in central Turkey, Assyria in northern Mesopotamia, and Babylonia in its south. The Hittites, in particular, competed with Egypt for control of Syrian and Palestinian cities like Ugarit. When these Bronze Age powers collapsed around 1200 BC, their disappearance opened a window for smaller states like Israel to flourish briefly in their wake. Subsequently, however, first Assyria (911–612 BC) and then Babylon (612–539 BC) established much more centralized and extensive empires across the Near East before being subsumed within the Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great and his successors.