Oldest Olive Oil recorded in Sicily

Until very recently and based on storage jars from Cosenza and Lecce in southern Italy, it was believed that olive oil made its appearance in the 12th and 11th century BC (Copper Age).

But a strange egg-shaped jar retrieved from excavations at Castelluccio in southeastern Sicily has proven that this golden liquid was used some 700 years earlier (actually the Bronze Age).

The jar was found during the 1990s and it took conservators a while to restore and reassemble the 400 ceramic fragments – speaking of patience! The result is a curious egg-shaped container of approximately one meter high decorated with rope bands; it could be lifted using the three vertical handles on the sides. The design as such had all the characteristics of Sicilian tableware from the end of the 3rd/beginning of the 2nd millennium BC (Early Bronze Age).

This called for more in-depth research on the site of Castelluccio where the experts found two fragmented basins with an internal septum (i.e. a dividing partition) indicating that several substances could be kept in one place but separated from each other. On the other hand, a chemical analysis of the organic residues found inside the jar and the basins was carried out. Traditional techniques as used on archaeological pottery were implemented: Gas Chromatography, Mass Spectrometry and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. As a result, the researchers found oleic and linoleic acids, specific to olive oil.

In short, we now have the first evidence of the oldest olive oil in Italy.

[Picture from Heritagedaily]