Abstract
Far from being just a foodstuff or a fuel for lamps, oil has long been a luxury product used for body care and perfume making. These latter uses were even prevalent in the Archaic period, and remained so in the early Classical period, when animal fat was used mainly for cooking, and torches made from coniferous wood were used for lighting. In Magna Graecia, as in Greece itself, the use of olive oil in the diet was much more widespread, but animal fat remained the mainstay until the Classical period at least. In the Archaic period, oil was not produced in large quantities for aristocratic purposes : sport, body care, festivals, lighting and food. So don't expect to find many traces of oil mills. Simple twisting presses made of cloth were usually sufficient, so much so that the press at the Villa dell'Auditorium in Rome, mentioned above (p. 10), remains exceptional. Local production of perfume vases, imitating Corinthian aryballes and Oriental flasks, is the main source of information on olive-growing areas, which were probably not very extensive at first. As the oil used for food was mainly consumed locally, there are no remains of amphorae to be found, with a few exceptions.
