Ortelius. A research atlas of thematic cartography
EST. MMXXVI PRIME MERIDIAN 0°00′00″  ·  EQUATOR 0°00′00″  ·  PROJECTION: ORTHOGRAPHIC 22 STUDIES INDEXED
Agricultural ·Antiquity ·Transregional ·Mediterranean

Olive-Oil Production of the Roman Mediterranean

Density of attested olive-oil pressing sites across the Roman Mediterranean.

60 records 1st c. BCE – 4th c. CE 37.29° N · 10.98° E
SCROLL ↓
Fig. 1 Interactive distribution of the 60 geolocated records on a live carto-positron base · globe / flat projection · decimal degrees (WGS 84).
Abstract

A representative density surface of olive-oil pressing activity across the Roman Mediterranean, concentrated in Baetica and Africa Proconsularis with secondary foci in Tripolitania, Istria, southern Gaul, the Aegean and Syria. Each record carries a press count (the density weight) and an approximate attestation year, so the surface can be animated across the imperial centuries. The dataset is illustrative — generated to exercise the engine's density cartography — not an archaeological gazetteer.

Record
ThemeAgricultural — land use & cultivation
RegionMediterranean
Temporal range1st c. BCE – 4th c. CE
Geographic coverageTransregional
Records60 geolocated entities
Data sourceRepresentative compilation (manual)
Centroid37.29° N · 10.98° E
Last revisedJun 2026
Provenance & sources

A representative, hand-generated dataset (not an excavation corpus): pressing-site clusters are seeded around well-attested oil-producing regions of the Roman Mediterranean, with press counts and attestation years assigned for cartographic illustration of density over time.

Recommended citation
Ortelius Editorial Board, ed. “Olive-Oil Production of the Roman Mediterranean” [dataset]. Ortelius: A Research Atlas of Thematic Cartography, Study AT-033. 2026. doi:10.5281/ortelius.033
DATASET CC BY 4.0 · ENRICHMENT CC0 · CARTOGRAPHY MIT
Data & reproducibility

The published dataset is distributed as CSV with a derived GeoJSON edition; coordinates are decimal degrees on the WGS 84 datum. DOI 10.5281/ortelius.033.