Spanish technological variants in the production of wine and olive oil in the Roman period

Abstract

An important concentration of peculiar agricultural and technological elements has been detected in the Hispano-Roman territory. Some of them are integrated in the agricultural technology of the Empire and some other will become a differentiating sign of the Hispano-Roman technology. In the specific case of the processes of wine and oil production, there is a big number of this kind of ‘variations’, and, as we will later see, some cases have an important capacity of being spread all over the rest of the Empire. Both the use of the cylindrical rotary mill used for the oil grinding and its identification with Columela’s mola olearia (also mentioned by Cato as mola hispaniense) and the oldest known application, at that time, of the screw mechanism in the beam presses in the southern Peninsula represent the most significant and distinguishing technological elements in the wine and oil production in Hispania. But also we can find other secondary elements, which were not as spread as the first ones, as the use of opus spicatum surfaces and double back reinforcements in the oil mills in the Baetica and the use of the system of ‘taissons’ for fixing the wine presses in the Tarraconensis. In a more general way, it is also found the use of oil decanting based on the mechanical treatment of the oil waste and the existence of a specific vinification container in the Hispanic area, according to Varro.