Olive Oil and Urbanism: Specialized Production in late 4th millennium South-West Asia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

During the Early Bronze Age (3800 – 2000 BCE) southern Levantine agricultural infrastructure developed on a region-wide scale to facilitate the accumulation of surpluses in the newly emerging urban landscape. Olive oil grew to be an important staple and luxury product. This discussion focuses on an EB IB (3300-3050 BCE) olive oil production site in northern Jordan where rock-cut features in the countryside were uniquely sealed with in-situ materials by a collapse event. I reconstruct the olive processing and oil production based on rock-cut features, architecture, lithics, and reconstructable ceramic vessels. A combination of vessel production analysis (Roux 2019) and assessment of function, aided by Organic Residue Analysis by Gas Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) is employed to reconstruct olive oil production and consumption habits at the site. By elucidating how different pottery types were used in olive oil production and storage, I suggest these processes can be identified in other archaeological contexts through ceramic assemblages. I use the EB IB olive press to discuss the relationship between the ceramic assemblages, arboriculture, surplus accumulation, and emergent urbanism during the southern Levantine Early Bronze Age.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 41657.0