vintages. This is also true of Thrace, where grapes were domesticated
early and where the abundance of wine-related iconography seems to
confirm the production of native wines.^43 By contrast, we know much
less about the cultivation and distribution of olives. In Macedonia, olive
production is demonstrable at country houses like that at Tria Platania
and can be variously documented in Chalkidike (Fig. 7.1) and on Thasos.^44
Consumption of olives and olive oil north of Rhodope still awaits a
serious study.^45 As the extract from Anaxandrides’play quoted by
Athenaeus makes clear, Thracians were butter eaters. Somewhere north
of Rhodope olive oil overlapped with milk products.Where’s the beef? Meat consumption
in the northern AegeanSurveying the role of meat, and beef consumption in particular, in
ancient Greece, Jeremy McInerney has recently highlighted the practical
challenges of supplying meat to the communities of central and southern
Greece between the sixth and third centuriesbc, a time when human
populations were rising and suitable grazing land diminishing. This
period coincides with the most prolific epigraphic evidence of special
provisions, whether at sanctuary or state level, for obtaining sacrificial
meat. Cows are deeply implicated in the Greek cultural mentality, a
phenomenon that McInerney has called the‘pastoralhabitus’or‘bovine
idiom’in Greek societies.^46 Cattle, the largest domesticated species of
ancient Eurasia and Africa, hold a special place in the cultural vocabu-
laries of those societies that have put cattle at the centre of collective
consumption. Thus bulls became metaphors for masculinity and cows
were associated with goddesses of fecundity and queenly nurture.^47 The
‘bovine idiom’ certainly existed in the northern Aegean, but was(^43) Popova 2002, 292, 297; Stoyanov 2011, 200; Valamoti et al. 2007, on early grape
domestication and wine production.
(^44) Xen.Hell. 5.2.38 (olive groves in Chalkidike); Cahill 2002, 226, with further refs;
Hatzopoulos 1996, II, no. 22 (grants of land by King Lysimachos to Limnaios, including
‘plēthra gēs endendrou, l.7, 18: the trees are most likely to be olive trees); Grandjean and
Salviat 2000, 181–2.
(^45) Brun 2004, 92–117, esp. 93–95; 100–101(evidence from sites in the northern Aegean).
A doctoral dissertation by Natalya Ivanova (University of Nottingham, UK) that explores olive
production north of Rhodope, alongside other kin 46 ds of agricultural production, is in progress.
McInerney 2010, esp. Ch. 6 (131–45) onHomeric Hymn IV to Hermesand theHymn
to Apollo; 150–94 (sacred economies; the emergence of markets for sacrificial cattle); 244– 9
(the‘bovine idiom’in Greek culture).
(^47) McInerney 2010, 32–3, 42–7, 49–73, 244–9.
Dining cultures 287