3,500-Year-Old Olive Pits Provide Evidence of Early Cultivation in Dalmatia

Researchers from the archae­ol­ogy depart­ment of the University of Zadar, Croatia have dis­cov­ered 3,500-year-old olive pits at an archae­o­log­i­cal site off the north Dalmatian coast.

The dis­cov­ery pro­vides firm evi­dence that olives have been cul­ti­vated in the area for more than 3,500 years.

The archae­ol­o­gists have uncov­ered hun­dreds of well-pre­served olive pits found in thick lay­ers of marine growth under the sea in the Pašman chan­nel located between the island of Ričul and the Croatian main­land.

The dis­cov­ery also reveals that olives were a part of the diet of the pre-Liburnian inhab­i­tants who lived in the region over 3,500 years ago dur­ing the Bronze Age.

Mate Parica, one of the researchers from the University of Zadar Department of Archaeology par­tic­i­pat­ing in the exca­va­tion project, con­firmed the age of the pits to Olive Oil Times: ​“We know that they are 3,500 years old because they are in a set­tle­ment layer, and we have three radio­car­bon analy­ses from the same strati­graphic layer,” he clar­i­fied.

Parica also con­firmed that this is the old­est evi­dence of olive cul­ti­va­tion in the east­ern Adriatic and that the pits were found where a set­tle­ment once existed but is now sub­merged due to the rise of the sea level of the Adriatic Sea over the cen­turies.

Archaeologists have been explor­ing the archae­o­log­i­cal site since 2014. During a pre­vi­ous exca­va­tion, the researchers had uncov­ered this sub­merged pre­his­toric set­tle­ment cov­er­ing an area of over one hectare.

Artifacts like tools and ceram­ics dat­ing back to pre­his­toric times were found here, as well as a 125-meter-long struc­ture made of stone that linked the set­tle­ment with the nearby island of Ričul and may be part of a defen­sive wall.

One olive pit was also uncov­ered in this same area a few years ago but the sam­ple was not suf­fi­cient. With this recent dis­cov­ery of hun­dreds of pits, an analy­sis can be done to deter­mine the olive vari­ety they belong to and whether they’re of an exist­ing Dalmatian vari­ety.

• N1 News


• Zadarski