Olive oil storage during the fifth and sixth millennia BC at Ein Zippori, Northern Israel

Abstract

Several occupation levels dating to the sixth to fifth millennia BC (the Wadi Rabah and pre-Ghassulian Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures as well as the Early Bronze Age IB–II) were found in a salvage excavation conducted at Ein Zippori in the lower Galilee. Pottery vessels from the different periods were sampled for organic residue analysis study and were analyzed using gas chromatography (GC) coupled with mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Olive oil was one of the most common organic residues detected in the vessels, from the levels of the Wadi Rabah occupation and onwards (sixth to fifth millennia BC). This find throws new light on the exploitation of olives in the southern Levant as well as on the large-scale production and consumption of olive oil in the Late Pottery Neolithic and pre-Ghassulian Chalcolithic times.

Keywords:

• olive
• domestication
• oil production
• jars
• amphoriskos
• Ein Zippori
• Pottery Neolithic
• Wadi Rabah
• pre-Ghassulian
• Chalcolithic

Acknowledgments

The excavations at Ein Zippori were conducted by the Israel Antiquity Authority and were funded by the National Company of Roads. The authors wish to thank Fadi Abu Zidan, Enno Bron, Gilad Jaffe, Roy Liran, Maayan Shemer, Alla Yarosevich, Omar Zidan, for their invaluable help in the field. The authors are also indebted to Heeli Shechter and Lena Brailovsky for their work on the flint and obisidan assemblages, and to Rivka Mishayev and Mendel Kahan for their work in surveying and drawing of dig plans and sections. Thanks are also due to Yossi Ya'aqobi and Yossi Laban for their administrative skills and to the field workers from Kfar Manda, Nazareth, Iblin, Shefaram and Tiberius. Pottery restoration of the vessels was done by Lea Porat. Radiocarbon dating was carried out by Joanna Regev and Elisabetta Boaretto from the Weizmann Institute of Science. Pictures and illustrations were made available courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority. We thank the department of publications of the Israel Antiquities Authority for the permission granted to publish this research. We want to thank Simcha Lev-Yadun and Dafna Langgut, the editors of this special issue, for the invitation to participate in it and for their invaluable comments on a previous draft of this paper.