Ritual Production, Commodity Production, and Cultivating Agricultural Heritage in Ravni Kotari, Croatia

Summary

Agricultural crops may be selected not only because they "work" from the perspective of agroecology, but also for their value in maintaining religious affiliation, historical memory, and community identity. Drawing on emerging archaeobotanical evidence from the Ravni Kotari region of southern Croatia, this paper discusses the challenges of understanding continuities of cultivation practices over multiple millennia in relation to changing political-economic contexts within which cultivation has taken place. I emphasize the production of Olea europea and Vitis vinifera, two non-subsistence crops that emerged as central components of market-oriented production under the Roman Empire, and continue to provide the basis of commercial agriculture in the region today. The long-term transmission of these cultivars is complex. The ritual use of wine and oil within the Christian church may have sustained the cosmological importance of these crops through the geopolitically turbulent medieval period, while their commercial importance diminished. More recently, viticulture and oleiculture have become emblematic of "traditional" folk life and agricultural heritage, their consumption ritualized in new ways through agritourism. Ritual offers a lens for considering both the shifting social meanings of cultivated plants, as well as how and why certain practices can be sustained across social, cultural, and political disjuncture.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21852