Archaeologists Uncover Massive Roman Olive Oil Complex in Tunisia

Summary

Ancient mon­u­men­tal machines capa­ble of press­ing tons of olives and pos­si­bly wine are being unearthed in Tunisia at Henchir el-Begar, believed to have housed one of the largest olive oil pro­duc­tion dis­tricts in the Mediterranean. The site includes two large indus­trial build­ings hous­ing at least twenty beam presses, which were mas­sive wooden lever machines built for indus­trial out­put, and the exca­va­tion project is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between uni­ver­si­ties in Tunisia, Spain, and Italy, sup­ported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Ancient mon­u­men­tal machines capa­ble of press­ing tons of olives — and pos­si­bly wine — are being unearthed in Tunisia.

Real wealth came from large agri­cul­tural estates like Henchir el-Begar, where olive oil was pro­duced on an indus­trial scale for export.- David Mattingly, pro­fes­sor of Roman Archeology at the University of Leicester

A new arche­o­log­i­cal project is focus­ing on the exca­va­tion at Henchir el-Begar in Tunisia’s Kasserine province.

The thirty-three-hectare site is believed to have housed the largest, or one of the largest, olive oil pro­duc­tion dis­tricts in the Mediterranean. Remains of a rural vicus, includ­ing houses and track­ways, have been iden­ti­fied.

Active between the third and sixth cen­turies CE, the estate pro­duced far more olive oil than was needed locally, sup­port­ing a vast export net­work across the Mediterranean.

“The site itself has been known for some time. In the mid-19th cen­tury, a really impor­tant inscrip­tion was found there, which iden­ti­fies the site as a sen­a­to­r­ial estate,” David Mattingly, pro­fes­sor of Roman Archeology at the University of Leicester in the U.K., told Olive Oil Times.

Mattingly, who is not involved in the cur­rent exca­va­tions, has authored numer­ous stud­ies on ancient olive oil pro­duc­tion at Henchir el-Begar and across North Africa.

(Photo courtesy of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)

The new project began in 2023 and has since expanded through a col­lab­o­ra­tion among the University of La Manouba in Tunisia, the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain, and Università Ca’ Foscari in Venice, sup­ported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“The co-inves­ti­ga­tor of the new exca­va­tion project, the Tunisian arche­ol­o­gist Samira Sehili, in the 1990s did some ini­tial sur­vey where she recorded the basic plan of those great olive oil pro­duc­tion build­ings,” Mattingly noted.

The estate lies in the steppes of the Jebel Semmama mas­sif, where olives thrive despite lim­ited rain­fall.

It includes two large indus­trial build­ings hous­ing at least twenty beam presses — likely among the largest in the ancient world.

“The size and scale of these devices is impres­sive,” Mattingly said. ​“As the exca­va­tions go on, we can hope for many more details to emerge.”

“Up to this moment, we can esti­mate that each one of those devices could process some­thing like 12,000 to 18,000 kilos of olive oil a year,” he added.

According to decades of research by Mattingly and oth­ers, the beam presses at Henchir el-Begar were mas­sive wooden lever machines built for indus­trial out­put.

“The beam press is also known as a lever press, because it func­tions on the basic prin­ci­ple of the lever,” he explained. ​“In North Africa, some of the largest presses have a beam of nine to ten meters in length, which is enor­mous in scale.”

The long tree-trunk beam was anchored between tall stone uprights. A mas­sive coun­ter­weight block, equipped with a wind­lass, was attached to the free end to gen­er­ate immense pres­sure.

“Stone uprights such as those in North Africa are one of the most out­stand­ing visual impres­sions of the pres­ence of presses,” Mattingly said. ​“We get these pairs of mono­liths with a cap­stone. They look a lit­tle bit like pre­his­toric mon­u­ments. One’s mind could go to Stonehenge. But they are very clearly parts of these beam presses.”

Workers raised the beam using ropes and pul­leys, then stacked large bas­kets of crushed olives on a stone base beneath the fixed end.

“On top of that press bed, they piled up bas­kets of pulped olives,” Mattingly said. Each bas­ket could be one meter wide — far larger than mod­ern press­ing mats.

The gap between the beam and the base reveals the vol­ume being pressed. ​“We can cal­cu­late, within cer­tain mar­gins, the height to which these bas­kets were stacked up,” Mattingly noted.

“The high­est height beneath the press beam that I’ve recorded is over two meters. So, if you think about a stack of one-meter-wide bas­kets that goes up to about two meters in height, you’ve got almost a ton of olives in a sin­gle press­ing.”

As the beam was low­ered, a mas­sive coun­ter­weight increased pres­sure, slowly squeez­ing oil into nearby chan­nels and vats. ​“The beam itself could weigh tons. That con­tributed to the pres­sure within the press,” Mattingly noted.

The sys­tem allowed adjust­ments dur­ing press­ing to keep the stack sta­ble and max­i­mize extrac­tion.

“Often they have a num­ber of square holes pierced in these uprights, which allow that end of the press beam to be adjusted … for dif­fer­ent vol­umes of olives under the press beam,” Mattingly said.

Such a large press may have com­pleted one press­ing per day. ​“It would take most of the day and pos­si­bly the night to extract the max­i­mum,” he noted.

Excavation may clar­ify how the presses con­nected to var­i­ous recep­ta­cles. ​“They could have been stor­ing dif­fer­ent qual­i­ties of olive oil,” Mattingly explained.

Channels lead­ing to stor­age vats and evi­dence of olive mills point to sub­stan­tial local cul­ti­va­tion — and pos­si­bly wine pro­duc­tion.

The presses may not have been lim­ited to olives. ​“The same type of presses could have also been used for wine pro­duc­tion,” Mattingly said, not­ing future exca­va­tions may reveal grape-pro­cess­ing instal­la­tions.

Ground-pen­e­trat­ing sur­veys indi­cate a size­able set­tle­ment, likely hous­ing ten­ant farm­ers and sea­sonal labor­ers who sus­tain large-scale export agri­cul­ture.

“What’s really cru­cial here is the exca­va­tion now tak­ing place. Given the impor­tance of archae­ol­ogy in Tunisia and of olive oil in the econ­omy of the coun­try, both ancient and mod­ern, it is a para­dox that so lit­tle inves­ti­ga­tion has been made of rural sites,” Mattingly remarked.

The ancient agro-indus­trial hub known as Saltus Beguensis was a pres­ti­gious sen­a­to­r­ial estate with eco­nomic reach far beyond its rural sur­round­ings.

Moving oil from Henchir el-Begar to the coast required a demand­ing over­land jour­ney. ​“One can imag­ine lit­er­ally hun­dreds of greasy-back don­keys going back­wards and for­wards,” Mattingly said.

The site’s impor­tance is under­scored by a mid-sec­ond-cen­tury inscrip­tion that records impe­r­ial autho­riza­tion for a twice-monthly mar­ket — a priv­i­lege that required a for­mal appli­ca­tion to the emperor.

“You couldn’t just say: I’ll have a mar­ket on my estate. You have to apply for per­mis­sion to the Roman Emperor,” Mattingly explained.

These mar­kets sup­ported trade and helped attract sea­sonal labor, which was essen­tial for large-scale pro­duc­tion.

According to Mattingly, vis­i­tors to Roman North Africa often admire the mon­u­men­tal archi­tec­ture but rarely grasp the agri­cul­tural engine behind it.

“Real wealth came from large agri­cul­tural estates like Henchir el-Begar, where olive oil was pro­duced on an indus­trial scale for export,” he said.

“It is really fan­tas­tic that we now have a project that seems to be start­ing this inves­ti­ga­tion,” Mattingly added, sug­gest­ing the site could one day sup­port oleo­tourism.