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<pre>On Wed, 11 Aug 1999, Phil Bramley wrote:
> p.s. what to do with the waste products is well worth a new discussion
> subject.
>
Phil,
I've got a lot of information on the use of olive pressing waste products
(a whole dissertations worth in fact). While ancient authors (Columella,
Cato, and others) list a number of uses for the amurca or lees (the liquid
wastes), many aren't exactly applicable for the modern day (smoothing out
plaster floors, oiling leather, etc). I have found modern references to
using the liquid waste as fertilizer for the olive orchards.
For the solid wastes (jift in Arabic, jefet in Hebrew), there are a large
number of uses. The main use is as a fuel, both domestic (traditional)
and industrial (traditional and modern). Jift burns very well, gives a
steady, high heat, and burns almost completely to ash (bad for me as an
archaeologist, no remains to excavate!). It is used commercially as a
fuel for pottery kilns especially. There are companies in Jordan now
making charcoal from it, and their bags make a point out of saying it is
"olive jift charcoal." Burns great too.
Other uses include use as fertilizer (both the jift and the ash from burnt
jift), animal feed (being experimented with), and construction mix (for
mortar, an ancient use).
Very little pressing wastes are thrown away in Jordan, and I suspect, this
was true for antiquity as well.
Peter Warnock
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