Recherche par auteur > Kopačkova Jana

Production of wine and olive oil was vital for every day live in Antiquity. Wine was part of a daily diet of rich and poor and olive oil was widely used not only as a fundamental part of the Mediterranean diet but also for lighting and various types of production. So, it is not surprising that we can find traces of production of wine and/or olive oil in almost every Roman farm building in the Eastern Adriatic (part of Regio X Histria and province of Dalmatia). However, presence of pressing devices inside of luxurious villae, public thermae or even inside the cities is rather peculiar. Also, parts of richly decorated funerary monuments or public buildings with inscriptions were used secondarily to construct these pressing devices. Those significant changes are typical for the turbulent period of Late Antiquity that brought many novelties also into the agriculture production. Due to the danger of frequent barbarian raids, wine and olive oil production as a vital part of local economy was relocated from villae rusticae in the countryside to the relative safety provided by the city walls (the so-called rustification or re-ruralization of the urban environment). Secondary use of funerary monuments occurred at a later date when it was forgotten to whom the tombstones or sarcophagi had originally belonged. In Late Antiquity, in addition to countryside villae, necropolises were also raided by barbarians and the early Christians had no problems turning them into public quarries.