Underwater excavations at a 2,500-year-old harbor in Ionia—a major center of ancient Greek civilization on the western coast of Anatolia, in present-day Turkey—have uncovered olive pits, hazelnut shells, grape seeds and other food remains, offering new insights into the diet of its ancient inhabitants.
The remains come from Clazomenae, near Izmir, where stone breakwaters enclosed a harbor covering about 5 hectares in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. In a study published in the journal Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, Tom Maltas of the University of Oxford and colleagues examined plant remains from underwater and land excavations.
Researchers screened more than 750 samples from submerged deposits and selected 308 for closer examination. Olive pits appeared in roughly half the samples, sometimes in groups of more than 500. Those samples date to the Archaic and Classical periods.
Discarded food at the harbor in ancient Ionia points to daily meals
Most olive pits were intact, while hazelnut shells were broken or split. Those patterns suggest that people ate olives whole and cracked nuts before discarding the remains near boats or along the waterfront.
The submerged deposits also contained grape seeds, almond shells, and a stone from a sloe, the small fruit of the blackthorn shrub. Researchers recovered a pine cone, although it may have entered the water naturally.
A waterlogged well on land, dating to the late sixth century B.C., held another collection of food remains. Its contents included about 1,470 olive pits and 1,665 grape seeds, along with hazelnuts, almonds, sloes and a rare caper seed. The caper and sloe finds add evidence that these plants may have been eaten in the ancient Aegean.
Waterlogging preserved a wider variety of fruits and nuts than the charred deposits on land. Excavations also yielded wheat, barley, millet, lentils, bitter vetch, and figs, offering a broader picture of local food production.
Farms expanded as Clazomenae became more populated
Barley was prominent in earlier periods, but free-threshing wheat grew more important during the Archaic period. The researchers suggest that expanding rural settlements and more intensive farming could explain the change. Millet may also have provided an additional summer crop as the population grew.
Nearby hills and forests likely supplied hazelnuts, almonds, and sloes, alongside food grown in cultivated fields. A large olive press built in the sixth century B.C. provides separate evidence of substantial oil production. Some oil may have traveled through maritime trade, although the harbor remains mainly points to olives eaten whole.
Together, the discoveries suggest that the people of Clazomenae depended heavily on nearby farmland and woodland, even as the settlement maintained connections across the Aegean.
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