Trade Resource Descriptions: Help the EBII Team

[Brennus]

Greetings Europa Barbarorum II Fans!

First of all I would like to express a big thank you to everyone who has contributed/continuing to contribute to the Province Descriptions.

However, if you wish, you can help us even more by contributing to the Trade Resource Descriptions.

We are still missing descriptions for the following trade resources:

Gold
Silver
Iron
Livestock
Gems
Quarry
Slaves
Honey
Lead
Olives
Copper
Salt
Pitch

Please be aware that the EBII historians may add details to these descriptions (having had a brief look at the missing descriptions a few ideas have come to mind) but we need your help as these descriptions can be time consuming and, in an effort to make more progress with EBII, our historians would prefer to focus on their respective factions.


If you would like to assist please let us know what trade resource you would like to work on (unlike the province descriptions it won't hurt to have more than one person looking at a trade resource).

Classical sources like Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy and Arrian are good places to get information, but please be aware that Trade Resource Descriptions should not be too regionalised; EBII covers a wide area and it would not be very good to have a trade description for, let's say, Iron which only dealt with the iron of Athens or India. Your descriptions should be as wide ranging as possible.

As a rough guide, here are the current descriptions for Special Dyes and Elephants/Ivory:

Special Dyes - This area produces special dyes, like Tyrian purple, woad or indigo. Some regions like India, Kanaan and Pretannike are known to have the natural resources (like murex) to produce important quantities of exotic dye that is very valuable as a trade resource.

Historically, the wearing of dyed clothing, at least in most societies, was an indicator of wealth, especially if you wore multicoloured clothes. Simple white clothes were easy to produce. The vast majority of clothes from this period were made of cloth, which is naturally white. Bleeching to increase the whiteness of the fabric could also be achieved, at least in warmer climes, by simply exposing the fabric to the sun for extended periods of time. By contrast, dyeing required effort, time, and in many cases, money. All the dyes used in this period came from animals and plants. Their production and application required time. To be able to wear dyed clothes, and multicoloured ones at that, announced to the world that you had the time and money to be able to produce and purchase such items. Diodorus described the Gallic dress sense as “striking” and noted the Gallic preference for brightly coloured shirts and stripped cloaks. There were of course some exceptions to the rule that dyed clothes indicated wealth. For example the Roman toga and Greek chiton had very little dye (in the case of Roman consuls only an inner lining of purple was dyed into the fabric), in these cases it was the material and fold of the fabric which announced the wearers wealth.

Dyeing was performed using large basins or vats into which the dyes were poured and the cloth worked. Vats such as this continue to be used in North Africa and other regions which have not industrialised. The variety of colours which sites such as these can produce is incredible, but in antiquity there was one colour which was superior to all; purple. Later Roman legionaries and provincial authorities would attempt to produce purple by mixing red and blue dyes, however if you were an aristocrat in any society there was only one, official, source of purple; murex shells. The murex is a predatory sea snail, the shell of which can be ground to produce an exquisite purple. In antiquity one group of people held a monopoly on the trade in murex purple; the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians were probably the first people to farm an animal on a scale which today we would call industrial. They kept murex snails in ceramic jars and produced the dye at dedicated sites so large that Tyre and Sidon stank of the dyeing process. Archaeological evidence has shown that each jar contained a high number of murex snails, with many shells showing evidence of being eaten by other murex snails. Such indicators are common in modern animals which are housed in cramped and stressful conditions. Indeed the Phoenician monopoly of the murex purple trade was so great, that our word for Phoenician actually comes from the Greek word for purple.

and

Elephants / Ivory - This area has significant numbers of elephants, which can be either tamed and used for war, or killed for their highly valued ivory tusks. Libya, Neilos (Egypt? Kush?), India and Syria can each provide their own varieties of these beasts, but every breed is different and has its own peculiarities.

Historically, although the last European species of elephant, the woolly mammoth, became extinct at the end of the last Ice Age (although a small population of dwarf woolly mammoths would continue to survive until c. 1700 BC on Wrangel Island, Russia), all the non-island subspecies of Asian and African elephants were still extant by the start of EBII's timeframe. These included the now extinct North African forest elephant and the Syrian elephant, a western population of the Asian elephant which continued to survive in Syria, Anatolia and Mesopotamia until c. 100 BC. Elephants had two primary uses during this period: they were a source of ivory (the other main source being the walrus) and were used as mounts for war. Ivory, being malleable, easy to carve and having an attractive colour was highly sought after as a decorative material. Perhaps the most notable use of ivory was at the statue of Zeus at Olympia. The body of the god, which was constructed out of ivory and clothed in gold plated copper, was approximately 13 metres high and it is theorised that in order to form his ivory into sheets the architect, Phidias, soaked it in vinegar.

The other, and more famous, use of elephants was as war mounts. As a general rule the Seleukids and Mauryans employed Indian elephants (the Mauryans supplying the Seleukids with elephants as a result of a treaty between Seleukos I and Chandragupta Maurya), whilst the Ptolemaioi and Carthaginians made use of the North African forest subspecies. The difference in size between these two subspecies is noted by Polybius in his description of the Battle of Raphia in 217 BC where he describes how the larger Seleukid elephants routed their smaller Ptolemaic opponents. Even though the Ptolemaioi and Carthaginians used African elephants it must be remembered that these were of the North African subspecies, and not of the much larger savannah type. It is unclear whether or not the Syrian (west Asian) subspecies of elephant were used in battle. The species was likely still extant until the 1st century BC and Hannibal is recorded as having used an elephant called Surus. However, the Seleukid kings are recorded by Strabo and Polybius as having made use of Indian elephants. Whether this was because of the Indian elephants' reputation or whether these animals were imported due to a scarcity of Syrian elephants remains unclear. Similarly unclear are the methods used to capture elephants. Unlike other species, such as dogs, it is simply not possible to remove an elephant calf from its mother and raise it due to the fact that elephants have a lengthy weaning period and, as animals of higher intelligence, they tend to suffer from conditions such as depression. One story describes mahouts in Africa climbing onto the hind leg of a mother elephant and using a hatchet to hack at her leg. The mahout team would then lead the calf away and the now partially disabled mother would follow, thereby ensuring the survival of the calf. How widespread this method of elephant capture was is unclear.

[Moros]

I'll do the pitch one myself I have some good articles and research on it laying around anyway.

[Brennus]

We still need help with this if anyone is interested?

[Ailfertes]

I could take a look at olives, but I can't say at this time.

[Auvar]

I'll work on a salt description for you folks. I'm pleased to be able to help out.

[Auvar]

Salt – This area is a center of salt production, used primarily for the preservation and seasoning of food. Certain areas like the fenlands of eastern Brittania, the Nile delta, the Ostian marshlands near Rome, and the coastlines of Utica, Armorica, and Cyprus were particularly known for salt production from brine. In inland regions like Cappadocia, Noricum, and Gandhara, salt could be mined from natural deposits on the surface or underground instead.

Historically, salt was one of the most universally important commodities of the ancient world. Aside from being an essential nutrient, salt was a popular seasoning and was used to prevent food from spoiling by the processes of brining, pickling, and curing. In addition to its culinary and preservative uses, salt also played a role in industrial processes like tanning and dyeing; salt was said to be necessary for the extraction of the treasured murex purple dye. Such was the esteem in which salt was held that some ancient cultures, including the Latins and the Hebrews, considered it a necessary component of sacrificial rituals. Pliny the Elder wrote effusively of the uses and benefits of salt, listing dozens of regional varieties produced across the Mediterranean world, each with their own texture and taste, and acknowledging that “so essentially necessary is salt that without it human life cannot be preserved.”

Salt was (and still is) either evaporated from naturally occurring brine or directly extracted from halite (rock salt) deposits in the earth. Brine was traditionally heated in rough ceramic pans, known as “briquetage,” to yield solid salt. Briquetage has been found at La Tene sites, notably in Armorica, which continued to be a center of salt production in Roman times, but the technique is far older - remnants of briquetage have been found in Europe dating back to around the 6th millennium BC. In hotter and drier environments, the sun alone could be sufficient for salt evaporation. At Utica, salt water was drained into shallow pools and dried naturally, after which the solid salt would be collected into large piles; some salt is still produced this way in Europe today. Salt mining has been going on for nearly as long – the oldest known salt mine, found in Noricum (modern-day Hallstatt), may have been exploited seven thousand years ago. Although mining required neither fuel for heating briquetage nor the cooperation of the weather, it could be dangerous and difficult even beyond the normal risks associated with mining – one could dehydrate simply from being in contact with so much salt. Until the advent of modern industrial processes, extracting salt from either earth or brine was a very labor-intensive task which maintained salt as a highly valuable commodity and an item of prestige on the tables of the wealthy. The Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans all engaged in long-distance salt trade; the Via Salaria, one of the earliest Roman roads, was probably so named because it began as the route by which salt was carried from the Tiber marshes to the Sabine highlands.


Pliny the Elder was my main ancient source, as he rambles on about salt for quite some time in the Natural History. That Neolithic briquetage site is Poiana Slatinei, in Romania. There are a lot of other anecdotes I could include here – the whole disputed “salary” etymology, the myth of salting the fields of Carthage, Alexander’s horses discovering the Khewra salt deposits in Gandhara (which are still exploited today) and so on, but I wanted to keep it brief and not dwell too much on Roman topics.

I didn’t bother properly translating names (Neilos/Nile, and so on). I figure the EB team members who actually know some Latin/Greek, unlike me, can handle that just fine.

Please let me know if you have any questions or feedback on my entry – I hope it’s in the ballpark of what you’re looking for!

[Brennus]

Auvar this is exactly what we are looking for! Excellent work! You have managed to create a description which covers several areas in EBII, uses information from classical sources and isn't biased in favour of a single culture.

I will just altar the names to make them EB appropriate (Neilos, Kypros, Norikom, Albion instead of Britannia etc) and add the coding breaks for paragraphs but that is all that needs to be done.

Thank you!

EDIT: I also added in the Punic colonies in western Iberia who used shallow basins to evaporate salt water as it fitted in nicely with the example from Utica you gave.

[Auvar]

EDIT: I also added in the Punic colonies in western Iberia who used shallow basins to evaporate salt water as it fitted in nicely with the example from Utica you gave.

Sounds good - the thing about salt is that there was probably some "craft production" going on almost anywhere people lived by the coast; the question is what areas rise to "major" or even "industrial" scale, which can be hard to determine. Pliny mentions Utica specifically (Roman Utica, of course, but it's not as if the Romans brought the technique to Africa) but given the long-standing Phoenician trade in salt it would surprise me not at all to learn that their Iberian colonies engaged in the same form of production.

I might be able to cover some other resources, particularly the extractive ones - I happen to know more about salt than any of the other ones (don't ask why), but I'll think about it and see if there are any others I feel competent enough to tackle.

[Auvar]

Lead – This area is known for its rich deposits of lead, which is used for a variety of industrial, architectural, and even military applications. Some areas such as Iberia, Albion, Attika, the Rhineland, and Sardinia were known for plentiful supplies of galena (lead sulfide), the principal ore of lead in the ancient world.

Lead was one of the first metals to be mastered by the ancients on account of its ease of refining; galena can simply be crushed and roasted to remove the sulfur, yielding nearly pure lead. Lead has a low melting point and resists corrosion, and is thus both easy to work with and highly durable. For these reasons, lead was often used for the manufacture of household items like cooking pots and tableware. Lead kettles and cooking vessels were especially valued and were sometimes reputed to impart better flavors to food – “defrutum” or "sapa," a common Roman sweetener, was made by boiling down grape juice in lead vessels, which would have produced lead acetate, the sweet-tasting “sugar of lead.” The Romans and Greeks were well aware that lead could be poisonous if ingested, but the ability of lead to leach from vessels into food and water was not well understood. Lead glaze for pottery was invented in the 1st century BC in Asia Minor and soon became very popular in the late Hellenistic and Roman worlds – it was glossier, more resilient, easier to work with, and potentially more colorful than older alkaline glazes. Unrefined galena had a long history of use as a cosmetic in Egypt. Lead’s density recommended it for use in sling bullets; Xenophon claimed that Rhodian slingers with lead bullets could achieve twice the range of their Persian counterparts with stones, and such ammunition probably caused much more profound injuries as well. Lead was further used in aqueducts and drainage systems, as sheets of lead could be easily rolled into pipes. The Romans are perhaps the most famous for using lead for plumbing, but Rome was not alone; the aqueduct of Pergamon, built by the Attalids around 200 BC, included a lead siphon. Lead saw use in construction as well – the builders of the Parthenon used molten lead to protect iron joints in the stonework from corrosion. Lead was also alloyed with other metals to produce pewter and bronze, from which a wide variety of objects were crafted.

Galena was mined in many places in the Mediterranean world, often at locations first exploited for the silver it is often found with. Laurion in Attika, famous for being the chief source of silver for classical Athens, produced lead as well; indeed, Laurion continued to be mined for lead long after the silver had run out. The Romans, and probably the Phoenicians before them, acquired lead as far afield as Albion, whose native people were clearly familiar with lead mining and left behind many artifacts of “lead bronze.” Pliny later wrote that lead was so widespread there that production had to be limited by law. Mines in Sardinia and Iberia also predated Roman and Phoenician use; the Phoenicians may have transmitted techniques to the native Iberans that helped them expand silver and lead mining for foreign trade. The most important Roman contribution to mining these areas may have been the extensive use of slave labor. In the 2nd century BC, Polybius reported that the mines at Cartagena, which produced lead as well as silver, were worked by 40,000 slaves; Diodorus describes the conditions in the Iberian mines as so bad that most slaves felt death would be preferable. Many of these mines were in fact privately owned until the end of the Roman Republic, after which they were all eventually appropriated, purchased, or confiscated to provide revenue directly to the imperial state.

I've already cut this down considerably, but it might still be too long. There are a number of other uses for lead that I could well have thrown in!

I widened my sources a bit for this one, drawing from Pliny, Xenophon, Polybius, and Diodorus. Listing all the places where lead was mined seemed daunting; I tried to focus instead on a few of the most important sources, while trying to get away from the Roman lead industry whenever possible. Lead is rather curious because it so often accompanies silver – a number of modern sources simply talk about “lead-silver” mining – which may mean that I ought to do silver as well.

I opted not to touch the "pervasive Roman lead poisoning" angle that seems to show up a lot in popular history. I felt like throwing in a mention of defrutum, lead acetate, and the classical understanding of lead toxicity, but that might be too narrowly culturally focused. I have found no mention of anyone but the Romans using lead vessels in that way.

My pre-existent knowledge of ancient metallurgy is considerably less than my knowledge of salt production, so I welcome any corrections or clarifications here.

[Brennus]

Another fine job Auvar. I'm just wondering if there is anything from outside if the Romano-Greek world which could be added to it?

[Auvar]

Another fine job Auvar. I'm just wondering if there is anything from outside if the Romano-Greek world which could be added to it?

I've been thinking about that, but what I've been able to come up with isn't that promising. Lead, in a pure form, unfortunately doesn't seem very well attested in the greater Celtic world, save as tailings from pre-Roman silver mines or alloyed with other metals. As I mentioned, lead-bronze was made in Britain, and it also appears to have been widely known in continental Hallstatt and La Tene cultures, but there's not that much else to say about that unless I want to start discussing bronze. Because lead extraction was often incidental to silver mining, it's really hard to determine if pre-Roman lead mining sites were actually mined for lead or whether they were interested largely or solely in silver. Pure lead objects that have been found tend to be little and simple things like fishing weights.

One of the few interesting finds I did read about was the burial cache at Rosegg, Austria, where hundreds of little lead figurines were unearthed - people, small animals, birds, chariots, horses, and so on - but this find seems practically unique, and in any case it's from the Hallstatt period. (Here is a picture I just uploaded.)

Lead coinage was apparently rather widespread during this period in India - the Satavahanas, contemporary with the EB period, minted such coins, and seemed to have imported lead for the purpose - but I haven't seen any evidence that lead coinage was used in the part of India actually covered by EB, save perhaps for some lead coins from the very late Indo-Greek king Strato II, when the kingdom was essentially on the verge of collapse.

I've been working on a silver entry on and off for the past few days, and I'll certainly be on the lookout for more stuff on lead outside the Greco-Roman world, but I feel like I've sort of exhausted my sources on lead at this point.

[Moros]

I like both descriptions very much! Awesome work Auvar.

[Auvar]

Silver – This area is known as a rich source of silver, a precious metal widely used in art and as a medium of exchange. Many regions have small amounts of silver included in other ores, but regions like Iberia, Sardinia, Paropamisadai, Dacia, Attika, and Asia Minor, as well as parts of Albion, Gaul, and Germania were known for their silver production.

Historically, silver served alongside gold as a standard of value that was widespread across the Mediterranean world. The very earliest known coins, found in Asia Minor, are of electrum, a naturally occurring gold-silver alloy. Silver coins were minted by the Achaemenids and the Hellenistic kingdoms that succeeded them as well as the Mauryans, Carthaginians, and Romans, sometimes parallel with gold currency and sometimes exclusively, particularly when gold was scarce. Coinage was unknown among the Celts and Dacians until its gradual introduction through interactions with Greek colonies and the expanding Macedonian state, but these people were already well familiar with silver-smithing. The Dacians crafted exquisite silver spiral bracelets, sourced from rich mines in the Carpathians; when the Romans conquered Dacia, they claimed to have looted more than one million pounds* of silver from the royal treasury of Decebalus. Silver was crafted into vases, tableware, mirrors, and jewelry within the Greco-Roman world and without. On the steppe, silver bowls were buried with their owners in Sarmatian kurgans, and the famous Gundestrup cauldron, possibly of Thracian origin but crafted with Celtic motifs, stands out as an example of the skill of ancient silversmiths and the widespread appeal of silver.

Although silver does appear in nature in its pure form, as well as in natural alloys with gold – Pliny wrote that “in all gold ore there is some silver” – most ancient silver was extracted from silver-bearing galena, an ore of lead. Silver was separated from lead and other impurities by the process of cupellation, known since the Bronze Age, in which the crushed ore was heated in a crucible, or “cupel,” commonly made of clay. Under intense heat, impurities were vaporized or melted and absorbed into the porous cupel, leaving the silver behind. It was this method that the Phoenicians used to first refine Iberian silver on a large scale, though the native Iberans probably engaged in some silver production before Phoenician contact. Though ancient, the process continued to be refined over time, to the point where Strabo could report that the silver mines at Laurion in Attika were still worked, regardless of their exhaustion, because silver could be extracted from slag that had been discarded centuries before as worthless or unprofitable. Silver mining was performed largely by slaves under the Greeks and Romans; Laurion was worked by slaves in its Athenian heyday, and the famed silver mines at Cartagena employed as many as 40,000 slaves under Roman ownership. While mines like Laurion were typically owned and operated by the state, many Roman silver mines were privately owned (though heavily taxed) until the fall of the republic.

I tried to keep this one slightly briefer. There's a million artifacts and applications of silver, of course, so it can always be expanded.

I made a conscious effort here to include some non Greco-Roman anecdotes. Clearly there’s some crossover in the last section with the lead entry, but as they were produced in much the same manner and in literally the same places, that feels unavoidable; at least I tried to mix up the phrasing.

I am aware that the origin of the Gundestrup Cauldron is disputed, but not feeling qualified to enter that debate, I thought I’d just settle for what seems like a broadly held opinion and let the experts here clarify my statement as needed. It’s a fantastic example of silverwork from the time and seemed like it really merited a mention here. (I also read in the forums at one point that it was part of the inspiration for the Averni symbol, which just made it more necessary).

I’ve got a lot of work to do this month so I may be slowing down a bit, but unless anyone else takes them I’ll be looking next at gold and copper. The nice thing about the metals is that they all sort of segue together; you do research on one and you’re already set up for research on the next one.


*Note: This is a troublesome figure; the amount of silver looted varies dramatically depending on where you read, and seems to rest on a now-lost original document, with the confusion further compounded by later errors and estimates. The figure I quoted is from Julian Bennett, who writes "According to a Byzantine epitomator, using the now lost Getica of Trajan’s physician, T. Statilius Crito, it comprised not less than 5,000,000 lbs of gold and 10,000,000 of silver… And even if it is now accepted that these figures have been inflated tenfold through an error in transcription, the true sum being 500,000 lbs of gold and 1,000,000 lbs of silver, it remains an extraordinary amount." I like having a figure in there, of course, but it might be more accurate to just say "a lot!"

[Brennus]

Sorry for the dalyed response Auvar. The silver one is very good. From the perspective of the cultures I deal with the only thing I will add is the silver coinage employed by the Arverni, which is very important in Gallic economic history, and the silver coinage of the Celtiberians.

Would it be too much to ask add the information to about the Satavahanas to the lead section? I can add the heavy exploitation of lead which occurred in Roman occupied Iberia and Wales.

Once again, this is a great help to us! Thank you!

[Auvar]

I was thinking of reworking the lead entry a bit anyway, possibly this weekend, so I can certainly add in the bit on lead coinage. Happy to help.

Is there some kind of maximum or ideal length for these? I was trying to base my entries on your samples, but the lead one might end up quite a bit longer after these additions. I had assumed these were mouse-over descriptions for strat map resources or something to that effect, and for that reason it would be unwise to make them too long, but I could be totally off base on that. It's been a while since I played M2TW.

[Haithabas]

Keep up the great work, Auvar!

[Brennus]

I was thinking of reworking the lead entry a bit anyway, possibly this weekend, so I can certainly add in the bit on lead coinage. Happy to help.

Is there some kind of maximum or ideal length for these? I was trying to base my entries on your samples, but the lead one might end up quite a bit longer after these additions. I had assumed these were mouse-over descriptions for strat map resources or something to that effect, and for that reason it would be unwise to make them too long, but I could be totally off base on that. It's been a while since I played M2TW.

Don't worry about length (she said ), the descriptions can be extremely long; some of the province descriptions, for example, are very big. However, it is best to keep them to a similar size. What you have done so far is fine.

[Ailfertes]

I'm making good progress with the olives, have been very busy lately and not an expert at all, but I've been through Theophrastus, Columella, Cato and Pliny (Varro was a bit too silly IMHO). Question though: I will obviously focus on olives and especially olive oil, but do you want short sections on the tree (wood) itself and its leaves?

[Moros]

I think it's best to focus mostly on the fruit and oil itself and of course area of cultivation and it's uses.

Also an additional source you could possibly use, which I've also been using for the pitch description, is Dioscorides.

[Ailfertes]

Olives – This area is known for its abundant cultivation of olive trees, valued for its fruit which can be eaten raw, or pressed to produce oil. Olive oil was an important element in Mediterranean nutritional habits, but was also used for lamp fuel and various medicinal and religious purposes. By the Hellenistic period, the olive was spread across the Mediterranean basin and across Mesopotamia to the east as far as the Caspian Sea. Areas such as Syria, Syrthim, Campania, and above all Kyrenaia and Turdetania were especially famous for its production.

Historically, olives were so ubiquitous in the Mediterranean diet that they are counted among the ‘Mediterranean triad’, along with cereals and grapes (wine). The fruit and its oil are particularly rich in various fats and therefore calories, being an inexpensive and much-needed addition to a diet mainly based on cereals. The oil was however not only used as a foodstuff. Oil lamps were the main source of illumination in urban environments, and became synonymous with secretive or erotic nightly exploits. As it warms the body, softens the skin and relaxes the muscles, athletes in ancient Greece and later Rome used oil to clean their bodies after exercise, and it was already generally employed as a skin care by the ancient Egyptians and Minoans. Pedanius Dioscorides notes that olives which were crushed and brined were an excellent treatment for burns and filthy wounds. Olive oil was itself ingested as medicine: for stomach problems, against sweating, and even as a mouthwash. More frequently, olive oil was used as a base for healing salves. Already in ancient Mesopotamia, it was employed as a solvent for herbs, spices and flowers to make various perfumes. Theophrastus remarks that for this product the oil from ‘coarse olives’ was especially desirable. Amurca, a by-product of the pressing process, was used as a pesticide, as varnish, and for the production of plaster. Olives had significant religious connotations. In Judaism and the Egyptian religion, olive oil took a central role in the anointing of leaders. Triumphant athletes in the Olympic games were crowned with olive branches, as were military leaders in Rome rewarded with an ovation. Famously, in Greek mythology the Athenians preferred Athena’s gift of an olive tree over a spring granted by Poseidon, giving the city its namesake.

Ideally, olive trees grow in warm, not too hot climes with mild winters, such as the Mediterranean coasts. The soil is very important, as the roots of the tree are very sensitive to rotting in damp earth. Therefore, groves are often established on hillsides with light topsoils, such as sand, and a porous subsoil, such as gravel. The olive can become very old, and some trees that were planted during the EB timeframe exist even today. To grow new trees, young branches were taken from older specimens and planted in nurseries. Columella identified ten different species, all having their own attributes, although he admitted many more must have existed. Both wild and cultivated olives were harvested, and while the former bore more fruit, the quality of the domesticated variant was considered vastly superior. Sufficient pruning, manuring and watering was recommended by ancient authors to make sure the harvest was plentiful. The time of harvest depended on the species and the weather, and could vary from September to March. Pliny recommended gathering the fruit when it was on the point of turning black, which was called ‘druppa’ in Latin. An individual tree only bears fruit once every two years, although Pliny blamed this on the manner of harvesting, which was most often done by beating reeds on one side of a branch. Once gathered, the fruit had to be dried and pressed as soon as possible, as prolonged storage would diminish the amount and quality of the oil. The olives were gathered in wicker baskets, which were pressed by man-powered machines to extract the oil. As today, the product of the first pressing was deemed to be of the highest quality. Besides oil, this process produced high quantities of amurca, a bitter liquid composed mostly of water. To separate this, the floating oil was repeatedly ladled from one vessel into another, which were set up as a row in the pressing chamber, until the oil was deemed sufficiently pure. Olive oil spoils after one year, and salt could be added to prevent it from becoming too viscous.

The last part is perhaps somewhat too long, some elements could easily be cut as you see fit. As I said, I am certainly no expert, and if people know more about certain things feel free to correct me. I tried to include other cultures that the Helleno-Roman, but unfortunately the sources do not really allow this, and olives were ofcourse mainly present in the mediterranean. I found something about the Carthaginians, but it merely stated that they primarily used the wild olive.

[Brennus]

Looks good! I agree the second paragraph could be pruned a bit (). Olives are unknown in temperate Europe until after the Roman conquest so don't worry about it being Mediterranean centric. One thing to note is if you are using inverted commas make sure they are straight "", curved ones such as you find in Microsoft Word tend to mess with the games code.

[Ailfertes]

So, Auvar will perhaps take the rest of the extractive resources, which leaves only livestock, slaves, and honey? I think I don't know enough of any of these to volunteer however. Aren't slaves impossibly difficult though? There were so many types of slavery (between and within cultures), so many ways of employing them (agriculture and mining versus domestic slavery), so many changes during the timeframe. What I think is especially hard is having slaves as a resource, since mostly they were captured in battle or were born in slavery - therefore impossible to represent on a map. How do you see this?

[Arjos]

What I think is especially hard is having slaves as a resource, since mostly they were captured in battle or were born in slavery - therefore impossible to represent on a map. How do you see this?

Afaik there were major hubs, where they were sold to Mediterranean polities (for example Delos, Rhodos, Massalia). So those could be used, representing the "middle man" so to speak. Otherwise there were areas, which became almost a byword for slaves. Like Paphlagonia or the Northern Euxeinos, especially near Tanais. I might say an absurdity now, but I think "warslaves" were usually employed by the conqueror for important constructions and mining. Or more often "slaves" obtained in war, were really just relocated.

I've read also a good chapter about the economic aspects, showing how "bad" too much volume was. For it plummeted the prices, ransoming was a far more profitable enterprise.
So certain cultures, with endemic "small wars", provided a constant source, which didn't "bust" the market in a way...

[moonburn]

altough a few centuries later the main reason why the vikings went to ireland was to get slaves and considering the most relevant points of irish culture one can even say that the great irish competitive advantage against everyone else is the making babies process (or as a new yorker from the 19th century would say there´s never a shortage of irish for any stupid job for any meaningless wage )

also the word slave actually cames from slav since they became the predominant slave group at some time in the roman empire (ofc being suplied by the schytians or sarmatians) and that particular area was very used and abused even up to the 17/18th century suplying slaves to the ottoman empire (roxana the mythical slave girl of suleymani was from that area)

so you can always use a few key regions as "suplyers" also point out that slavery wasn´t considered a bad thing in those cultures it only became a "bad thing" once it became a byword for racism and catholics being confronted with the islamic law that forbid a muslim from having a muslim slave had to counter attack by creating the abolishion movement

and if there´s room in there dismiss the mith that jews were slaves in egipt they had to work like everyone else for the spiritual wellbeing of the country by enabling the phaero to comunicate with the gods via his burial site (if i recall properly it was normally only 15 years of hard work during one of the 4 seasons of the year and it was considered a civic duty)
another important myth is the use of slaves in the chartaghinian navy you could only be part of the navy if you where a citizen if not you could maybe join the marine corps of the lybo-phoenician but navy duties where reserved for the cream of the crop of the citizenry

[Brennus]

So, Auvar will perhaps take the rest of the extractive resources, which leaves only livestock, slaves, and honey? I think I don't know enough of any of these to volunteer however. Aren't slaves impossibly difficult though? There were so many types of slavery (between and within cultures), so many ways of employing them (agriculture and mining versus domestic slavery), so many changes during the timeframe. What I think is especially hard is having slaves as a resource, since mostly they were captured in battle or were born in slavery - therefore impossible to represent on a map. How do you see this?

Once I get back to the UK (currently in Australia) I will see if I have a copy of a very good article discussing slavery in the Iron Age, and forward it to you. If not I will provide the reference.

[Auvar]

I just wanted to mention that I'm not dead - as a college instructor, I'm incredibly busy right now, this being the start of the semester and everything.

I intend to make a few changes to lead, and then move on to gold. Iron and copper are also "extractive," and I'll certainly consider doing them, though it may potentially be a better idea to give those to someone with more interest/experience in ancient armor and weaponry, if such a person exists and is interested in resource writing. Ancient weaponry seems to be one of those things with a lot of well-read enthusiasts - as opposed to, say, ancient lead-smithing - and I wouldn't want to embarrass myself in front of them.

[Brennus]

Don't worry about it, I am tied down myself at the moment (as fans of the Twitter account have no doubt noted). Your work so far has been of great help to us, so I am perfectly happy to wait for the next installment.