Abstract:

In recent years the knowledge of the first phases of export of olive oil from Baetica has been furthered, especially in the individualization of the first Baetic containers of Roman tradition, used to sell this product inside and outside of Hispania. This innovative process begins during the third quarter of the 1st century BC and it increases exponentially from the second half of the century. The aim of the paper is to explain the evolutionary and transformation process of the different precursor containers of Dressel 20, with its workshops in the Guadalquivir valley and the external diffusion. The aim is to analyse the future of this process within the broad economic context of the late Republican and Augustan Mediterranean, comparing the data related to Baetic olive oil with the production and export of olive oil from other Mediterranean regions, and trying to suggest certain guidelines regarding the advance of the production of olive oil in Baetica from the appearance of the first oleario types until it became the most important producing region from the end of the 1st century BC until the abandonment of Monte Testaccio in the 3rd century AD.