The 'place' of urban wineries and oileries in the Greek and Roman world

This paper is the first comprehensive Mediterranean-wide analysis of urban Greek and Roman wine and oil production sites. By using diverse examples from a range of periods we reassess the ‘place’ of urban viniculture and oleiculture against traditional explanations of ‘ruralization’, insecurity in the countryside, and urban contraction. New insight into how people engaged with urban spaces is developed through a combination of macro-level analysis in tandem with an observation of experiences at the meso- and micro-levels, by individuals and their neighbourhoods. Set within the context of recent sensory studies, we also explore both the experience of wine and oil production — one of labour, performance, celebration, and interactivity (between people, objects, practices, and place) — and the networks and relationships between production loci and their surroundings. Results highlight that urban wine and oil production was widespread, deeply embedded in the fabric of towns and cities, at times even prioritized, and fundamentally influenced space and the perception of place on variable microregional levels. These activities permeated the lived experience of urban inhabitants and visitors through sight, smell, and sound, and had the potential to restructure and revolutionize how ‘place’ was made.