In 1972 Colin Renfrew suggested that the rise of Mycenaean civilization may have been made possible by the development of a polycultural triad of wheat, vine and olive in the Early Bronze Age. A careful examination of the botanical and archaeological evidence for the domestication of the olive lends little support to this aspect of the thesis. The palynological evidence from various points in Greece is inconclusive, but for most areas it would seem to suggest that the intensive cultivation of olive began in the Late Bronze Age or even later.No conclusive archaeological evidence for processing or storage of olive oil exists for any period in the Bronze Age. The question of when olive domestication took place must remain unanswered until more data are available from Early and Middle Bronze Age contexts and more conclusive botanical.data have. been collected.In this paper we shall address ourselves to the problem of identifying the archaeological evidence for the domesticated olive in the Aegean with specific reference to Crete, the Cycladic islands, and mainland Greece. Our interest in this subject has been stimulated by Colin Renfrew's influential thesis (1972) that the Early Bronze Age (EBA) settlement of southern Greece was in part made possible by the introduction of the domesticated olive tree and the grape vine. The supposition that these were new cultivars at the beginning of the third millennium is a crucial part of Renfrew's thesis. Cultivated for oil and wine, these plants were part of the Mediterranean polycultural triad of wheat, oil, and wine, which together permitted an increase in population and settlement by allowing new and more marginal land to be brought under cultivation.We (Runnels 1985) have already drawn attention to other factors for the cultural expansion witnessed in the EBA, such as the introduction of metallurgy and the longship, or the existence of good harbours in Central and Southern Greece. We have also (Hansen 1984) drawn attention to the difficulties encountered in the attempt positively to identify the presence of domesticated olives in the archaeological record in Cyprus. It is useful, therefore, to turn our attention to the Aegean and mainland Greece, to focus upon the olive, and to offer a critical evaluation of the evidence for its use and domestication. This problem has two parts: first we must determine where and at what time it was first known in 0 OXFORD JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 5(3) 1986 299 THE OLIVE IN THE PREHISTORIC AEGEAN 0 5 0 1 0 0 k m -. N e o l i t h i c A E a r l y B r o n z e 0 M i d d l e B r o n z e L a t e B r o n z e Figure 1 Prehistoric Sites in the Aegean with remains of olive.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.