Before the Dressel 20: pottery workshops and olive oil amphorae of the Guadalquivir valley between the Late Republic and Augustan-Tiberian times

The Baetican Dressel 20 is probably the most widely diffused amphora of the Roman period, found in large quantities throughout all the Roman and nearby territories. It is the most powerful evidence of the importance of the olive oil trade for Roman society and of olive oil's extraordinary produ...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: González Cesteros, Horacio, García Vargas, Enrique, González Tobar, Iván, Berni Millet, Piero, de Almeida, Rui Roberto
Format: article
Publication Date:2024
Country:España
Institution:Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Repository:Docta Complutense
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/107139
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/107139
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:904(37)
Baetican olive oil
Regional economic interaction
Roman amphorae
Kiln sites
Late Republican and Early Imperial econom
Arqueología
5505.01 Arqueología
Description
Summary:The Baetican Dressel 20 is probably the most widely diffused amphora of the Roman period, found in large quantities throughout all the Roman and nearby territories. It is the most powerful evidence of the importance of the olive oil trade for Roman society and of olive oil's extraordinary production in the Baetican countryside. This wide diffusion of the amphora and, in some ways, its ubiquity at many archaeological sites, have hindered the study of the early stages of Baetican olive oil production and diffusion. The protagonists were not these spherical containers, commonly stamped up until the late 3rd c. CE, but previous models that evolved rapidly after their origins in Late Republican times. In this paper, we aim to analyze not only the formal characteristics and evolution of these peculiar and still unstandardized containers, but also other aspects linked to their production, as well as the scope of their diffusion.