It is difficult to think of ancient Greek culture without the commodities of olive oil and wine. In her book, Catherine Pratt argues that these two value-added commodities became so entangled with Greeks, their culture, and their identity through the ages that they took on the role of “cultural commodities”—that is, products that are produced because they are “indispensable for the functioning of social and economic exchanges well beyond economic advantage” (p. 9; emphasis in original). Cultural commodities are not subsistence nor purely economic commodities (though, of course, in the case of olive oil and wine, they can fulfill those roles). She makes use of the idea of “dependency,” a key part of the theory of entanglement, to argue that the relationships between people and the two commodities became so entangled that Greek societies could not function properly without them.
One of the great strengths of this book is its diachronic dimension, ranging well over a millennium from the Middle Bronze Age palatial cultures of Crete up to the eve of the Classical period of the polis and Periclean Athens (ca. 1900–600 BC). Few scholars work so well across these often compartmentalized periods, synthesizing great quantities of data. In each of five chronological chapters (palatial Minoan Crete, palatial Mycenaean mainland Greece, postpalatial Greece, Early Iron Age, and the Early Archaic period), Pratt addresses the same topics of production and exchange (commensal, gift, and economic). One can truly see the “dynamic stability,” as she terms it, of people’s entanglements with these two liquids through differences in technology, exchange, and sociopolitical systems. As is true of several younger scholars, Pratt eschews the negativity of the “collapse” of the Mycenaean palatial systems in the twelfth century BC and the ensuing illiterate “Dark Ages” and instead views the events as not only a transformation but even an opportunity for new social formations. Although we know there is a great deal of cultural continuity between the Bronze Age Aegean and the later Iron Age (e.g., the continued use of the Greek language and many of the same divinities), despite the great population changes and lack of written records for nearly half a millennium. Structurally, though, the societies are quite different: palace-based kingdoms as opposed to “city-states” and sanctuaries. Yet, olive oil and wine continued to serve in highly critical roles before, during, and after the social transformations of the “collapse.” One of Pratt’s goals is to explain why this continuity in importance of these two commodities (the “stability”) despite the greatly different circumstances (the “dynamic”).
Another strength of the book is how Pratt breaks down “exchange” into three separate modes: commensal (feasting), gift exchange (including to the gods and to the dead), and economic (trade). Olive oil and wine are often enhanced through flavors or perfumes—or even aging—and some regions had particular specialties, adding to their social and economic value. Pratt discusses extensively how olive oil and wine were moved around in ceramic containers, sometimes in very large quantities, on local, regional, and pan-Mediterranean scales. Maritime bulk transport has always been of interest to Mediterranean archaeologists (e.g., the voluminous studies of amphoras in Classical through Roman times), but only in the last couple of decades has this topic received greater attention in scholarship focused on earlier periods. Pratt integrates numerous specialist studies into her discussions of how this bulk transport changed through the centuries not only in scale and distribution but in the ways containers changed.
Both the olive and the vine are environmentally sensitive plants, with shifting distribution and fecundity related to temperature and aridity that can be ameliorated to some degree by human attention. Pratt wisely avoids climate-change determinism for a more nuanced exploration of changes in production, distribution, and consumption of olive oil and wine across major climatic events such as the 4.2 KYA event or the “Homeric low,” which occurred around 800 BC. These discussions are woven into her chronological chapters.
Unfortunately, as has been the case with other books from Cambridge University Press recently, the illustrations are not always of the best quality (the online PDF is much better than the print version), and some of the maps are illegible due to either their microprint or their captions (no legend), which identify colors but are printed in grayscale. These issues do not impact Pratt’s argument, however.
As she shows throughout her book, elites manifested themselves through varying practices of control over production, consumption, or distribution. In her concluding chapter, Pratt examines her findings through the lens of the construction of elite identities, providing a welcome grand narrative of the entanglement of olive oil, wine, and people.
