The Archaeology of Olive Oil: Excavations of a Bronze Age Olive Oil Factory in the Wadi Rayyan скачать в хорошем качестве

The Archaeology of Olive Oil: Excavations of a Bronze Age Olive Oil Factory in the Wadi Rayyan

Speaker: Jamie Fraser 10 Aug 2025 In the mid-third millennium BCE, the region’s earliest cities were abandoned, and populations dispersed into small rural villages. Yet this shift did not mean a simple way of life. Some of these modest settlements were enclosed within monumental walls—raising the question: why defend a village? Recent excavations at Khirbet Ghozlan in the Wadi ar-Rayyan explore the hypothesis that such sites functioned as specialised olive oil production centres, with fortifications built to protect valuable seasonal stores of oil. This lecture presents new evidence from British Museum excavations at Khirbet Um al-Ghozlan in the Wadi Rayyam, which include a storage complex, industrial processing tools, and—critically—microscopic botanical remains directly associated with olive pressing. Together, these discoveries illuminate the vital role that olive horticulture played in both the emergence and collapse of the region’s earliest cities.