Abstract
Compared to the other products of the famous Mediterranean triad - cereals, wine and oil - historiography has established an almost axiomatic relationship between olive growing and the Iberian Peninsula. This vision, supported today by Spain's number-one position in world oil production, is based on Latin agronomic texts showing large-scale olive oil production from at least the 1st century AD. A contradiction emerges between the historiographical theories diffusionist which see the establishment of the olive tree and the spread of olive-growing culture in the Iberian Peninsula from the I millennium BC, coinciding with the arrival of Phoenician settlers, and archaeobotanical studies, which defend the exploitation and even cultivation of the olive tree in the peninsula at least since the Neolithic. The aim of this seminar was to challenge these paradigms by addressing the following four questions: the origin of the olive tree in the Iberian Peninsula, the beginnings of olive oil production, the action of the Phoenicians and that of the Iberians.
