The study of ancient olive growing has until now been based on the study of historical and archaeological sources. This approach, based on the humanistic disciplines and despite the recent contributions of the archeology of the production of goods in relation to environmental resources, is however not sufficient to answer the many questions about the origins of the domestication of the plant in the Italian territory.
To orient new lines of multidisciplinary research, the “Eleiva, Oleum, oil” project was born.
A multidisciplinary project in the Amiata – Val d’Orcia area to contribute to the origins of the Tuscan olive growing heritage” which takes up and expands the experiences gained during the VINUM Project.
The postulate of the Project provides that, like the traces left by human activities, the environment also maintains in the current vegetation some characteristics developed during the growth and demographic development of an archaeological site.
The Project involves the use of an investigation methodology which, integrating the knowledge produced by archaeology, botany and biological-molecular analysis, has the aim of documenting and studying, through the analysis of the genetic profile and at the same time with the history of the selected archaeological sites, the persistence in their vicinity in particular of wild olive trees and centuries-old plants.