198 EVI MARgARITIS
of processing could have been taken place there, as suggested for prehistoric
Greece (Margaritis 2013 ); or installations could have been shared with other
households, with Platania offering other services, help or products in return,
as was often the case in Greece until recently (Margaritis personal observa-
tion). The lack of such equipment would suggest non-specialisation in olive
oil production at Platania. It is also possible that the production of olive oil
at a household level with a small scale surplus would have been carried out
by other means than expensive stone installations (see Margaritis forthcom-
ing: 83–6 for different methods of olive oil production), but it seems more
likely that production was sited elsewhere. The occupants of Platania could
have been involved in the production of surplus, in commercial activities and
in the exchange of products with other farmhouses in the region. The possibil-
ity that some of the oil surplus was given to a neighbour who hired out labour
and/or equipment should certainly not be excluded.Discussion
It has been suggested that archaeologists gather merely the detritus of ancient
life, which hardly represents the full range of processes of production, exchange
and consumption (Morris 2005 : 93). For example, studies of ancient wine deal
predominantly with its containers (amphoras), but less with production itself.
In this study, the archaeobotanical remains from Kompoloi and Platania add
considerably to our understanding of such processes in a region of Greece
that offers an array of soil and climatic microenvironments, which would have
encouraged agricultural experimentation and promoted the cultivation of a
wide range of crops. In addition, this kind of data offers insights on land hold-
ings, access to resources and labour requirements. It should be also mentioned
that the wealth and quantity of the material culture retrieved from both sites
is great, unlike certain other excavated Classical and Hellenistic houses (see
Morris 2005 : 113–19 for a thorough discussion on formation and abandon-
ment processes).
At Kompoloi, the large quantities of grape remains found in combina-
tion with significant storage facilities show engagement in large-scale viticul-
ture, most likely for trade. Unlike Platania, Kompoloi focused on ‘a particular
resource’ (Halstead 1992 ), and different types of evidence suggest that the site
was the centre of a specialised wine production industry. Halstead ( 1992 ) has
pointed out that it may be difficult to recognise local specialisation, as the
archaeobotanical or the archaeozoological data usually reveal more about the
place of consumption and not much about the place of production. Kompoloi,
on the other hand, does appear to be a site for the production of wine. The
capacity of the storage facilities clearly showed that on-site consumption would
have played an insignificant role in comparison to the amounts available for