about through the profitable combination of good soils and carefully
selected vines with managerial expertise and, thereafter, careful nurtur-
ing of selected recipes according to a practised method. Something
analogous must have been taking place in the rural properties of the
northern Aegean. Rural estates are much more likely to have been
the environments in which experiments could be conducted to improve
the quality and preservation of foodstuffs, including wines and other liquids
(such as perfumed oils). There is no reason why town dwellers should not
have expressed a similar curiosity and experimented with wines and oils;
but activities in and around theagoracluster around administration,
retail, and other forms of exchange. The atmosphere of theagorawas less
conducive to resolving technical and logistical problems connected with
the preservation of larger quantities of liquids and dry foods.
Even such a well-investigated site like Olynthos has not produced
much specific evidence of bulk storage of cereals and other dry foodstuffs
for communal use (if we exclude the pits on South Hill that may have
been used for grain storage during the Persian occupation).^29 Under-
ground storage is a traditional form of dry food preservation in the east
Balkan region and this practice seems to have continued well into the
second half of thefirst millenniumbc. The best evidence for large-scale
storage of this type has emerged during development work in rural parts
of Bulgaria, although such pits, sometimes numbering not just in dozens,
but in hundreds, have often been identified as having a ritual purpose
because of their ultimate contents. Originally many of these pits were
used for storing grain, as the evidence of special clay linings indicates.^30
The same phenomenon has been documented in Iberia, wherefields of
pits have been identified and have since become known as‘champs de
silos’or‘campos de silos’.^31 Two aspects of the Iberian parallel are
particularly helpful for evaluating the evidence from the northern
Aegean. One is the fact that the phenomenon of underground storage
is not universal in the region, but largely restricted to two areas, western
(^29) Cahill 2002, 235.
(^30) Margomenou 2008 for evidence from the earlyfirst millenniumbc; Tsiafakis 2010,
382 – 6 (Karabournaki, domesticpithoiand semi-subterranean pits); a survey of the Bulgar-
ian sites where large numbers of pits have been found is provided by Hawthorne et al. 2011,
although these authors have tended to assume that all pits were located in the open air and
have not pursued the relationship between the spatial evidence of pits and settlement data
(for which see e.g. Archibald 2002b and 2002c). 31
Dietler 2007, 257–8, nn.84, 85, with further bibliography; the capacity of individual
silos ranged from 300 litres to 10,000 litres. Burch, Nolla, and Sagrera 2010, for a recent
reappraisal of silos in Catalonia, in the vicinity of Emporion, covering the second half of the
first millenniumbc.
282 Dining cultures