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<pre>First of all, Hi,

I'm an experimental archaeologist based in Wales, and I'm currenlty
researching early perfume and cosmetic composition.
I need a bit of help sourcing a particular type of olive oil used in
antiquity and I'm hoping that someone here might be able to help.

The oil in question was known as Omphacion during the greek and roman
period and was pressed about now, during august from unripe olives.
It was preferred for perfume making because it had a
realtively 'ungreasy' feel on the skin and absorbed rapidly. It
apparently had a fairly short shelf life of a year and naturally
yielded less than oil pressed from fully ripe olives.

Do any of you know where I can get a small amount (probably just a
few litres) of this, or would anyone like to contribute to this
research project by attempting a small pressing for me? I'm on a nil
budget but I'll happily cover costs as far as I can and naturally
you'd get full credit in the final paper or publication as well as
samples of any reconstructed preperations made with this oil.

Any ideas??

Sally

PS I'm also trying to grow an olive, but Wales isn't famous for its
olive groves and I'm not holding out much hope...
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<pre>Visit Australia...we are mad enough to try anything...even growing olives
----- Original Message -----
From: <sallypointer@yahoo.co.uk>
To: <OliveOil@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2001 7:52 PM
Subject: [OliveOil] Experimental archaeology and Olive Oil.


> First of all, Hi,
>
> I'm an experimental archaeologist based in Wales, and I'm currenlty
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<pre>More than happy to help with Australian oil. It is typical for olive oil to
possess the qualities described altho I would contest the short life rider.
Usually the earlier the pick the longer the life. The "ungreasy" feel is
also typical of good quality oil no matter whether early or late picked. In
general (very), the later picked olives have a shorter life span on the
shelf and certainly the greener olives have less oil than more mature.

BTW what is an "experimental archaeologist "?

Let me know actual delivery address off-line to the site below.

Regards, Caird
www.victorianolivegroves.com
0418 392 157

> I'm an experimental archaeologist based in Wales, and I'm currenlty
> researching early perfume and cosmetic composition.
> I need a bit of help sourcing a particular type of olive oil used in
> antiquity and I'm hoping that someone here might be able to help.
>
> The oil in question was known as Omphacion during the greek and roman
> period and was pressed about now, during august from unripe olives.
> It was preferred for perfume making because it had a
> realtively 'ungreasy' feel on the skin and absorbed rapidly. It
> apparently had a fairly short shelf life of a year and naturally
> yielded less than oil pressed from fully ripe olives.
>
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<pre>--- In OliveOil@y..., "P Caird" <caird@o...> wrote:
> More than happy to help with Australian oil.
>
> BTW what is an "experimental archaeologist "?
>
> Let me know actual delivery address off-line to the site below.
>

Hi,
Thanks for that, I'll be in touch off list to discuss details.
An experimental archaeologist is an archaeologist who tentatively
tries out the technologies and products of the past in an attempt to
get a better understanding of how things worked and why people chose
certain methods. Most commonly you'll see experimental archaeologists
on documentaries doing things like casting bronze or knapping flints.
To try and reproduce something as elusive as scent based on
fragmentary documentary and physical eveidence is a bit of a 'black
art' even amongst experimental archaeologists, but I've always held
that an experiment should raise as many quastions as it answers, and
hopefully this project will help suggest some new lines of approach
to what is a very poorly understood area. (In practice it means
wandering round smelling like a cross between a spice souk and a
hoohaa's parlour and having vats of stuff going gloop in the
background all the time...)
Sally
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<pre>I wonder if this is the same thing:

http://www.av-at.com/oliveoil.html
Early-Harvest, Cold-Pressed, Extra-Virgin Olive Oil

Butch, the owner of the company (based in Turkey, he is American, he ships
worldwide) talks endlessly about this oil and anything else if you get him
going :-) He's a nice guy and can probably answer your question. He may
even be on this list, but I don't recall.

Cyndi

--
__________________________________________________ ________________________
Cyndi Norman cyndi@consultclarity.com
Owner of the Immune Website & Lists http://www.immuneweb.org/
Tikvah -- Organic and Natural Products http://www.tikvah.com/
Handcrafted organic soaps & cosmetics, beeswax candles, safety equipment
__________________________________________________ ________________________
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<pre>Howdy Sally,

I do some experimental archaeology as well, so you're not alone on
the list.

I have a question about the short shelf life: since the Omphacion was
prefered for perfumes, does the short shelf life refer to the oil (before
it is mixed for perfume) or to the finished product? Could the short
shelf life be a reference to the perfume - that the perfume has a short
shelf life and doesn't smell as good or loses its smell after a year?

As Brian Chatterton mentioned, Cato refers to the watery amurca
(processing waste water) being used to keep down insects. Cato also
mentions rubbing amurca on sheep and animals to prevent insects and pests.

It might be difficult to tell what ancient writers mean by "ungreasy."
Can you run absorbtion skin tests of different oils (100% olive oil, 50%
olive oil-water, 100% amurca, etc.) to see which one aborbs quickest?

Good luck.

Peter Warnock

--
Peter Warnock
Dept. of Anthropology
Swallow Hall
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65211
(573) 443-4203
(573) 884-5450 (fax)
pjwd29@mizzou.edu
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<pre>I think the shelf life refers to the oil, as there are several early
references to finished, olive based perfumes being kept for long
periods of time without undue deterioration. I had been considering a
skin absorption test but I'm in entirely the 'wrong' part of the
world to gain easy access to the wide range of oils that I'd wish to
try to get a result that would bear publication (any pressers out
there want to do a rough and ready test and report in??)
The perfumes I've attempted so far have been truly fascinating,
totally different to our modern expectations but so evocative, and
even with shop standard oil the results have fitted the broadest
parameters of the available descriptions, so I'm hopeful that the
suggestions I have been given for suitable early pressed oils will
let me get just that little bit closer to likely reality.

Of course, once I leave the roman period it gets so much more
complicated- the range of oils used during the medieval and tudor
soap trade starts getting a bit boggling...but thats a later chapter.

cheers
Sally
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<pre>My archeologic experience is 3 - fold

¥ Visiting ancient sites such as the Colloseum in Rome, Olympia,
Epdavros in Greece, Knossos in Crete, Agrigento in Sicily and Troy in
Turkey.

¥ Having a fish meal with a famous Professor in Athens - who asked me
why olive oils from different regions gave the fish a different flavour
and what influence did fish have on olive oil flavour.

¥ I have visited ancient cave sites in the northern parts of Australia
whereour indiginous people have left their mark by the way of cave
drawings.

regarding applying aromatics to the skin and other body parts - there
are many aromatic oils and substances - just check in the bible. Even
today people are experimenting with the rubbing of foodstuffs to the
skin - eg avacado, almond , walnut, apricot oils let alone ice-cream,
peaches and yoghurt.

So what did the ancients do? I am sure they would have worked out how to
make waters - rose and lavendar, the process of sublimation - camphor,
menthol and tyme. extraction with alcohol - just think of the greek
retsina wine which is rich in resins!

Getting to the point - olive juice would have to be one of the easiest
of juices to obtain. Just rub a ripe olive between the fingers. One must
not forget also that olea europaea as we know it today is at the end of
a long lineage. There are other oles and each of these would have fruit
and a different oil. Also the wild olive has fruit and I have read
somewhere that the oil is much more aromatic (accepatable?) than that
from the current olive. What more aromatic means is also debateable - it
may have been more pungent - Sandalwood is an accepatble oil, but it is
an aquired aromatic.

Not much fact, but this may trigger the imagination for some new thought
by the archeologists.


Stan Kailis
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<pre>>
> So what did the ancients do? I am sure they would have worked out
how to
> make waters - rose and lavendar, the process of sublimation -
camphor,
> menthol and tyme. extraction with alcohol - just think of the greek
> retsina wine which is rich in resins!
>


We're lucky in that there is a lot of evidence for the immensly
diverse trade in aromatic substances. Olive oil production is well
documented and writers such as Pliny and Dioscorides also talk at
length about oils expressed from other fruits The fact that omphacion
is specified as different to common olive oil definately suggests
that specific characteristics were being looked for. Interestingly,
they preferred almond oil from bitter rather than sweet almonds in
cosmetics (another oil its hard to getthese days- you can get sweet
almond oil by the bucket, and the bitter almond oil is just used very
sparingly [beacause of its toxicity] as a scent and flavouring, but
no-one seems to express it as a base oil any more..)Sesame oil is
another widely referred to oil. Aromatics included resins such as
myrrh and terebinth and fragrant herbs covered just as wide a range
as most perfumers use today.

The tricky bit is trying to reconstruct a plausible recipe from the
fragmentary evidence. If people are interested on this list, I'll
happily post one of the reconstructed olive oil based recipes if
anyone would like to try their hand at early perfume making.

Cheers for all the input everyone, its very stimulating approaching
this from a different perspective.
Sally
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