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In antiquity, as today, olive oil is made by
crushing olives and extracting
their oil from the resultant mash. The oil was then separated from
the mashed olives, or lees. A vast majority of the archaeological
evidence for early olive oil production comes in the form of large
stone crushing devices of various shapes and sizes.
The harvested olives were placed in bags or flexible
baskets (fiscis), and were then crushed or milled. The Roman
author Columella describes three
methods of crushing and milling olives, the canalis
et solea (the clog and vat), the mola
olearia (oil mill), and the trapetum
(a revolving mill, its name is derived from the Greek word
for treading).
Some oil would flow from the initial crushing
and collected in a leaden pot (cortina plumbea) that was
placed in the cistern (lacus) below the press. From the cortina
it was ladled out by with a large flat spoon (concha), first
into one vat (labrum fictile), and then into another, thirty
being placed in a row for this purpose. It was allowed to rest for
a while in each, and this operation was repeated (oleum frequenter
capiant) until the olive mash (amurca) and all impurities
had been completely removed.
The oil was finally poured into lined jars (dolia
olearia), the lids (opercula) were carefully secured,
and they were placed in a storage vault (cella olearia).
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