Agriculture has been said to be the most important economic activity in the ancient world. Without specialized agricultural activity, it is unlikely that the Roman civilization could have flourished to the extent that it did, as specialization allows for far more variety in human activity. The three key crops of the classical Mediterranean world were olives, vines and corn, known as the “Mediterranean triad” and their cultivation known as “polyculture”.
Olives were grown mainly for their oil, used extensively for a wide range of things including cooking and bathing, one third of the average person's annual calorific intake in the ancient world has been estimated to come from olives and olive by-products, whilst vines were grown mainly for wine making purposes. Corn and other cereal products were the staple food of Roman times, and its importance can be seen through the need to import vast amounts from North Africa, particularly Egypt and the area around Lepcis Magna.
There are a variety of sources for information on Roman agriculture, from literary texts and inscriptions, to representations in art, mosaics and relief sculptures, remains of the sites themselves, and environmental remains, such as pollens and seeds found in soil samples, which offer an invaluable view of the crops grown on agricultural sites.
Studies of tree rings and glaciers can give important information on the climatic conditions of the time as well, allowing archaeologists to better assess the yield a crop would have during this period, while a study of animal bones can show a lot about methods of animal husbandry and butchery.
There are several types of agricultural sites from the Roman period, the major ones being villas, farms and “market gardens” such as those found in Pompeii. Villas are perhaps the most significant agricultural sites, and thus, the most significant economic sites, and the sheer numbers of these sites around the Mediterranean region and the provinces indicates the importance of agriculture during this time.
However, these sites pose some considerable problems in interpretation, as although masonry buildings can be relatively easy to discern, timber buildings and land boundaries rarely survive, except in arid or very wet conditions, neither of which are common in the Mediterranean. Thus, without written evidence to attest to the extent of land owned by individual complexes study of field systems is very difficult and soil samples must be taken from hypothetical field areas.
The area covered by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79 offers archaeologists an invaluable opportunity to study the agricultural practices of the people living in villas and farms and working in commercial gardens, as the debris from the volcano not only preserved otherwise perishable material such as fruit, nuts and pulses due to its eruption in August, before harvest, when many crops would have been bearing fruit, but also left cavities from the roots of trees and vines, allowing for casts to be made and studied of this material.
This has allowed for study of the arrangement of crops in the large “market garden” complexes within Pompeii, and comparison with the arrangement of buildings elsewhere can allow for a general view of the methods of farming. A combination of the “Mediterranean triad” is common, as olives and vines bear fruit later than cereal crops and use different soils so that all three can be grown in close proximity, with parallel rows of vines with olive trees spaced either in between them, as seen in the commercial garden with two outdoor dining rooms for commercial service, or around the edges, as in the “orchard” garden in region 1 of Pompeii, allowing for cereals to be grown in the shade produced by these taller plants. Some complexes ran a similar method for the growing of vegetables, these sheltered beneath large nut bushes.
The machinery and tools used in cultivation are another matter once again. Items such as ploughs, the earliest and most important form of agricultural machinery, have not survived from this period, but descriptions in written sources and representative art, such as mosaics, wall paintings and reliefs, often show tool distinctly, allowing us to assess their form and use.
Roman ploughs, it seems, normally consisted of a wooden frame with an iron share, and were used to make a furrow but could not make a ridge unless it was adapted, as it had nothing in the way of a mouldboard. The plough would be pulled by a large animal, such as an ox or a donkey, and, due to “dry farming” techniques used in the Mediterranean region to conserve moisture, would be used frequently. Although this was remarkably similar to earlier Greek ploughs, other pieces of agricultural technology indicate the innovation and the high degree of specialisation in farming.
Columella describes a vine-dressers knife (the falx vinitoria) which consists of blades to draw away (the culter), draw forwards (the sinus), smooth branches (the scalorum), hollow branches out (the rostrum), cut with a blow (the securis) and to cut in a narrow area (the mucro).
Each part of this knife is clearly specifically designed for certain necessary tasks in tending the vines, which was in itself a highly specialised and labour intensive task, requiring three times as many labourers as growing cereals. Still more impressive is the cereal-collecting “heading” machine described by Pliny the Elder and Palladius, and seen in a relief in Buzenol in Belgium. Unlike a modern harvesting machine, this machine was designed to strip cereals from the stalks, by means of a series of blades.
Pushed from behind, the machine faced a series of technical problems to solve; its blades had to be arranged so as not to become clogged, it had to be the correct weight to keep the animal's pace steady as it pushed the machine, it needed some form of device to prevent stalks from being tangled in the wheels, and it needed to operate continuously without frequent need to stop and clean it.
From the Buzenol relief and Palladius' account we can see some of the solutions: upturned blades would prevent clogging and loss of grain, splayed edges to the frame would push stalks away from the wheels, and the use of a spatualte stick would aid the process of cleaning the blades. This machine was clearly a great innovation, though its efficiency is uncertain.
It is unlikely that all farms and villas would use such a device, especially as threshing and winnowing techniques are also documented, most would probably contract extra labourers around harvest time, especially in the case of grapes, as the fruit can rot while still on the vine if not harvested quickly.
Following the harvest, we now come to the matter of processing these crops. The presence of press rooms and threshing rooms at many villas and farms suggests that this was usually carried out on-site, those sites without permanent presses would perhaps have a wooden, portable one.
Corn was treated in two main stages: threshing and milling. Threshing was originally carried out either by having an animal “tread it out” separating the corn from straw by eventually breaking them apart, or by labourers beating them out with wooden flails. Over the course of the period new methods were adopted, namely the use of an animal drawn drag which would separate grain from stalks by means of friction.
Another device introduced for this purpose is the so-called “Punic Cart” which separated grain not by friction, but by cutting them apart with toothed rollers when the cart was drawn over harvested sheaths. Winnowing was carried out with a vallus ventilabrum (winnowing shovel) then grain was either left on the outdoor threshing-floor or, in areas more prone to strong winds, in a winnowing basket (vannus).
Grain could then be stored in the horrea (granary) until needed. These were large buildings raised above the ground on stilts to deter vermin and keep the grain away from damp conditions. Studies have shown that in many cases the horrea were coated with amurca (a by-product of olive oil production) which seems to have been used as an insect repellent.
Husked grains such as emer or barley then required further work, these also needed to be roasted and hulled with a pestle (pilium) and mortar, convict labour was often used for this monotonous process, before being milled The process of milling is one which appears to have gone through some considerable evolution during the Roman period, as can be seen in representative models and art, written texts and in physical remains, ranging from the earliest cylindrical “saddle-quern” mills to water-powered rotary mills.
Quern-stones from rotary handmills (mola varsatilis) have been found throughout the empire and consisted of two disc-shaped stones which would sit on top of each other, operated by means of a handle on the top stone. The upper stone had a “lip” on the underside, whilst the lower stone had a corresponding indentation around the edge, allowing ground flour to escape, whilst a hole in the top of the upper stone allowed for grain to be fed in.
These were relatively small and were usually used for domestic rather than commercial use. The introduction of animal powered mills, often powered by donkeys (mola asinariae), such as those found in Pompeii, or horses, allowed for considerably larger-scale flour production. These mills consisted of an hourglass-like upper stone resting on a bell-shaped lower stone.
Grain could be fed through from a hopper into the top of the upper stone where it would fall between the upper and lower stones and could be ground into flour, as the upper stone was moved by donkeys, mules or horses harnessed to a beam slotted into this stone. Smaller, man-powered examples have been found in Sicily. Larger water mills appear to work on a similar model to modern water-wheels and could process up to forty times as much as the donkey mills.
Wine manufacture is another well-documented area of agriculture, with a variety of methods attested in Pliny, Columella, Cato, Varro and Palladius. The general sequence for the process was to first select the correct grapes which were then taken to a pressing room to be treaded. The must, freshly squeezed juice, from this would flow directly into reservoirs or storage jars, such as dolia, while the remaining grapes were then pressed with a mechanical press.
This second pressing was usually kept separate from the first pressing, and was considered somewhat inferior. The remaining residue was kept and mixed with water to make a beverage for labourers, while the juice from the pressings was fermented in large jars either set into the ground or free-standing. Reliefs and mosaics show the juice flowing directly into these jars through channels, and sloping floors in some pressing rooms, such as that in the villa at San Giovanni, support this.
The process of olive oil production is significantly more complicated, due to the necessary removal of amurca, seeds and the skin of the olive. Both Cato and Columella mention devices and “oil mills” (mola olearia) used to remove the kernel from olives, and relief sculpture gives us pictorial representations of these; mills using large cylindrical mill stones.
Olives were taken as soon as possible after harvesting and crushed into a paste in a rotary mill, then juiced under a mechanical press, when the liquid would be channelled off into a sunken tank or lead container. The oil was then ladelled into smaller jars for transportation by means of a shell or shell-shaped scoop, a process which would allow for the removal of impurities.
Slight variations in the accounts of oil making suggest that there was more than one method in common use, while press-room sites offer further information. Non-porous floors allowed for short-term storage, while channels in the floors allowed pressed oil to flow away into tanks.
Sometimes, as in the San Rocco villa, two tanks were used, oil flowed from one tank to the other along a channel which served to remove any sediment. The presses used for wine and oil making vary considerably in size and form. Lever-presses, which operate by increasing the force put on the fruit by means of a lever, and screw presses, which use a screw mechanism to slowly exert force, are the most commonly depicted, although variation in size with these is also apparent, Cato describes a lever press using 25 foot long levers, described as “trees”, mortised to the walls of the press room. Another, less common, form of press is the wedge-and-beam press, such as the one depicted in the House of the Vettii in Pompeii, in which a series of wedges were used to force down the beams of the press.
Distribution of such products can be studied through shipwrecks and the distribution of pottery, particularly amphorae, aside from references in inscriptions and written sources documenting taxes, such as Domnitian's Edict, and references to the corn supply to Rome in many sources. The sheer number of pottery kilns and manufactories is an indication in itself of the large amount of trade in wine and oil being carried out, in the Guadalquivir Valley in Spain alone there are 150-200 kilns which have been estimated to be able to produce 200,000-300,000 amphorae per year.
The study of Dressel 1 and 6 and Baldaci amphorae, all of which carried wine, can be particularly useful. Large numbers of these have been found in wrecks along the Narbonnaise coast travelling from Italy, while similar Italian Dressel 1 amphorae have been found as far north as Britain long before the Roman conquest.
Clay analysis and pot shapes are not the only indication of trade, stamps such as the famous “SES” Sestii stamps, can be tracked as evidence of the extent of trade of items around the Mediterranean and beyond. Most wrecks and pottery found have been amphorae, although Cato attests to the sale of entire dolia, which were sold by weight, weighing the amphora empty and again when full.
In conclusion, the study of Roman agriculture and its importance within the Roman economy is one which archaeology can offer a great deal of evidence, particularly in conjunction with historical accounts.
