F.'s monumental book on the processing facilities for wine, olive oil and grain in Roman villas in Italy – the result of a doctoral thesis at the University of Leipzig – is an important entry in the field of the ancient agricultural economy. Despite the richness of the archaeological record, there exist only a handful of studies that deal extensively with the production units of villas in Roman Italy (J.J. Rossiter, Roman Farm Buildings in Italy [1978]; id., Phoenix 35 [1981]; J.P. Brun, Archéologie du vin et de l'huile [2004], pp. 6–60; G. Baratta, Römische Kelteranlagen [2005]). Collecting some 124 excavated and well-preserved sites across the peninsula, F.'s work is the first systematic – if by far non-exhaustive – treatment of the subject in fifteen years. With its focus on the construction, technical features and spatial arrangement of these facilities, it is also the first study to perform an in-depth examination of their place and function within the total design of these buildings. This is commendable, but two remarks are in order. With 90 sites located across Etruria, Latium and Campania, the book is first and foremost a comparative study of these three regions, and still more of the Roman Campagna and the Gulf of Naples, rather than of Italy as a whole. Also, only a brief section of the book is dedicated specifically to grain processing (pp. 100–19), which makes F.'s research principally an investigation of wine and oil installations. This is more observation than criticism – both are the outcome of biases in nineteenth- and twentieth-century research programmes and differing levels of archaeological preservation –, and above all a cue to readers of the interpretative boundaries of F.'s analysis.
The book starts with an introductory chapter, in which F. introduces the argument and the state of the art. In the next two chapters he first scans the technological and architectural characteristics of the production facilities and then scrutinises their relationship with other rooms and spaces of the villa. The fourth chapter frames these observations within regional and global historical and socio-economic developments in late Republican and early Imperial Italy. In an odd twist, the concluding synthesis is part of this section (pp. 196–205), rather than presented separately in a fifth chapter, which bizarrely consists of a three-page summary. The text part of the book ends with an interesting, if short, appendix on the role of production units as places of cult and representation (pp. 211–15), which feels out of place and is a topic discussed by F. elsewhere (‘Decorative Features and Social Practices in Spaces for Agricultural Production in Roman Villas’, in: Principles of Decoration in the Roman World [2021]). With some 250 pages, the massive site catalogue takes pride of place. Provided with detailed descriptions and clear and uniform plans, often drawn from difficult-to-access literature, F. has compiled an invaluable inventory with a firm focus on the agricultural utility spaces of villas (which are too often glanced over in favour of the residential and more luxurious parts). This achievement alone turns F.'s study into a new point of reference and a major resource for students and scholars of the Roman economy.
The merits of F.'s work go far beyond this long-overdue methodical presentation of rural production architecture in Italy. First, through his detailed analysis of pressing equipment and building techniques (pp. 21–68) F. consolidates and meaningfully expands the existing dual typology of press rooms in the Italian peninsula, as shaped through the works of J.J. Rossiter, J.P. Brun (L'oléiculture antique en provence [1986]) and G. Baratta. As such, he strengthens the case for the use of a regionally distinct press type in the Gulf of Naples – the historically termed ‘platform’ press, which was driven by a lever-and-drum mechanism of the kind described by Cato (Agr. 18–19) (F.'s ‘Konzept 2’) – vs the much more widely found ‘circular bed’ installations, generally equipped with a lever-and-(screw) weight press (F.'s ‘Konzept 1’). Time will tell if F.'s rigid geographical distinction will hold – the large body of evidence from less-preserved sites and fragmentary finds in Italy (not taken into consideration here) might suggest otherwise (E. Dodd, AJA 126 [2022]) –, but more than anything else, the evidence from in and around Pompeii points to a strong link between F.'s ‘Konzept 2’ presses and the making of wine, for which the area was renowned in antiquity. If F. never really touches on the differentiation between wine and olive oil presses – a notoriously confusing issue with no easy answers (J.P. Brun, ‘La discrimination’, in: La Production du vin et de l'huile [1993]) –, the lesser reliance of grape processing on channelled press beds (contrary to the sluggish stream of olive oil, pressed grape juice can run freely towards a collecting tank) strongly corroborates an interpretation of the Vesuvian ‘platform’ presses as wineries (p. 52). Another highlight is F.'s discussion of dolia wine (and oil?) cellars (pp. 74–100). Considering their centrality in Roman winemaking, dolia defossa rooms in Italy have received surprisingly little systematic analysis. F. takes important steps here and shows how their layout (open-air vs roofed, with or without windows etc.) and orientation (south vs north) were strongly linked to local climatic conditions, and thus an expression of terroir-minded thinking. This connection between production architecture and environment is a fundamental part of F.'s argumentation and a compelling aspect of the book.
The regional differences in F.'s datasets perhaps become most conspicuous when exploring the integration of these production rooms into the villa complex as a whole (pp. 121–64). In the large estates of Latium and Etruria these spaces formed logistically and mentally distinct units, often secluded and disconnected from the residential parts of the building. On the other hand, in the small and compact Vesuvian villas utility and living spaces were closely intertwined, with the production rooms commonly occupying a central position. Such disparities in size and setting are telling, even more so when appraising the role of both types of rural property in commercial farming. Indeed, F.'s study makes it clear that – at least in central Tyrrhenian Italy – the economic opportunities created by Rome's expansion policy in the Mediterranean in the second–first centuries bce gave rise to regionally varied production systems, to the benefit of both the rich and the middle class. F.'s work questions again the antiquated narrative of the dominant slave-run villa in late Republican and early Imperial Italian agriculture (cf. A. Marzano, Roman Villas in Central Italy [2007]; A. Launaro, Peasants and Slaves [2011]), and makes a convincing case for a much more hybrid picture of agrarian exploitation.
F.'s book is a landmark volume in Roman villa scholarship. Provided with a useful site index and a glossary on production facilities-related terminology, and competently illustrated with numerous black-and-white images and maps, this original coverage of Italy's production architecture is an essential source of information and a new starting point for research on wine and oil production in the peninsula.
