The Uluburun Wreck and Its Cargo of Oil
Some time around 1300 BC a small merchant ship went down off Uluburun, on the Turkish coast near Kas. When divers reached it thousands of years later they found one of the richest cargoes of the ancient world — and, tucked among the treasure, the humble evidence that olives were already an article of long-distance trade.
The Uluburun ship is the most famous shipwreck of the Late Bronze Age, dated to the late fourteenth century BC and excavated over many diving seasons off the southern Turkish coast. Its cargo reads like an inventory of the whole eastern Mediterranean at once : ten tonnes of Cypriot copper, a tonne of tin, blue glass ingots, ebony, elephant and hippopotamus ivory, gold and Egyptian scarabs, goods traceable to at least seven cultures. And amid that fortune, in the ordinary Canaanite storage jars called amphorae, the crew carried olives, resin, figs and pomegranates — food and trade goods both.
Olives as cargo, not curiosity
It is easy to picture ancient olives as something eaten only where they grew. The Uluburun jars say otherwise. Olives and oil travelled in the same holds as gold and ivory, packed in the standardised jars that were the shipping containers of their age. That tells you the fruit had already crossed the line from local staple to traded commodity more than three thousand years ago — the deep root of a business that still moves oil across the world today. If you want the modern version of that story, see the true cost of an olive.
What a jar of olives tells an archaeologist
The organic cargo is, in a way, more eloquent than the gold. Metal and ivory tell you a king was rich ; a jar of olive pits and a resin-lined amphora tell you how ordinary people ate, preserved and shipped their food. Resin lined the jars to seal them ; the same terebinth resin was itself a prized cargo. Olives, oil and resin together sketch a working Bronze Age pantry, sealed underwater and handed to us intact.
Why the wreck matters to olive history
Written records of the olive oil trade are thin for this period ; the Uluburun ship is physical proof where texts fall silent. It anchors a claim that is otherwise easy to wave away : that a Mediterranean-wide commerce in olives existed before the Trojan War, before classical Greece, before Rome. Every later chapter — Greek amphora exports, Roman shipping, today’s tankers of bulk oil — is a continuation of the voyage that ended at Uluburun.
| Date | Late 14th / c. 1300 BC |
|---|---|
| Location | Off Uluburun, near Kas, Turkey |
| Depth | About 44–61 m |
| Olive evidence | Olives & resin in Canaanite jars |
| Other cargo | Copper, tin, glass, ivory, gold, ebony |
| Significance | Oldest well-documented Mediterranean cargo ship |
The takeaways
- A ship that sank around 1300 BC carried olives and oil alongside gold and ivory.
- They travelled in Canaanite storage jars — the shipping containers of the Bronze Age.
- The wreck is physical proof of a long-distance olive trade older than classical Greece.
- Organic cargo like olives tells us how ordinary people ate and shipped their food.
The Uluburun wreck: common questions
How old is the Uluburun shipwreck?
It sank in the late fourteenth century BC, around 1300 BC, making it one of the oldest well-documented seagoing cargoes ever found.
Did it really carry olives?
Yes. Among the metal and luxury goods, the ship carried Canaanite storage jars holding olives, resin, figs and pomegranates.
Where is Uluburun?
Off the promontory of Uluburun near the town of Kas, on the Lycian coast of south-western Turkey.
Why does the olive cargo matter?
It is hard physical proof that olives and oil were traded across long distances more than three thousand years ago, long before classical Greece and Rome.
What else was on board?
Copper and tin ingots, blue glass, ebony, ivory, gold, scarabs and more — goods from at least seven different cultures.
People assume the olive-oil trade is a modern, industrial thing — tankers and supermarket bottles. The Uluburun wreck is my favourite corrective. Three and a half thousand years ago a working crew packed olives into the same standard jars that carried a king’s gold, and shipped the lot west. Nothing about the essential business has changed : press the fruit, seal it well, move it to where it is wanted. When a bottle in your kitchen feels ordinary, remember it is the tail end of a voyage that began before Homer.
Drawn from Institute of Nautical Archaeology reports on the Uluburun excavation and standard accounts of its cargo.