PLOUGH AND POWER: THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL

SIGNIFICANCE OF CULTIVATION WITH THE OX-DRAWN ARD IN

THE MEDITERRANEAN

Paul Halstead
(University of Shefield)

A rich and diverse body of archaeological evidence indicates that an 'ard' or 'scratch plough'
drawn by a pair of cattle was known, and in some cases used, in many parts of Europe from at
least the 4th-3rd millennium BC (Sherratt 1981; Chapman 1982). In the Mediterranean region,
3rd millennium BC models of a ploughing scene from Vounous in Cyprus and of yoked cattle
from Nemea in Greece (Pullen 1992) provide early evidence for m w l e d of ~ the
~ ard and of
animal traction; apparent osteological evidence for improved survivorship of male cattle at 3rd
millennium BC Pevkakia in Greece may indicate the raising of oxen (i-e. castrated male cattle)
for traction (Halstead 1987a, 81 Table 2), while Linear B texts from the late 2nd millennium BC
palaces of southern Greece unambiguously record the existence of pairs of working oxen
(Ventris and Chadwick 1973,212; Palairna 1989,91). In addition to its economic significance,
it has been suggested that the introduction of the ox-drawn ard played a major causal role in the
development of stratified society in bronze age Europe. Two principal arguments have been
advanced.
Gilman (1981) has suggested that ploughing with oxen necessitates fixed fields, cleared of
obstacles such as boulders and tree stumps, and thus represents a major capital intensification of
arable farming. This in turn enforces more permanent settlement and so prevents farmers from,
literally, escaping the clutches of emerging elites. Gilman's case rests partly on the assumption,
now almost universally rejected (e.g. Rowley-Conwy 1981; Behre and Jacomet 1991; Jones
1992), that early neolithic farming in Europe was characterised by short-term, swidden
cultivation of temporary clearances and consequently by impermanent settlement.
Sherratt (1981) draws on Goody's survey of ethnographic literature (Goody 1976), which
demonstrates a clear cross-cultural association between plough-based agriculture and stratified
societies, on the one hand, and between hoe cultivation and more egalitarian societies, on the
other hand. Goody draws attention to two possible causes which may underlie this association.
First, compared to manual cultivation, the plough raises output and so makes it possible to
support non-producers (e.g. a ruling elite plus retainers). Secondly, the plough involves more
extensive land-use and so increases the likelihood that land will become a scarce resource,
distributed unevenly between rich and poor. Both propositions are inherently plausible and, in
each case, Goody cites sparse supporting evidence of diverse geographical origin. On the other
hand, area yields (i.e. yields per unit area) of ard agriculture may be lower than those of manual
cultivation (e-g. Gallant 1991, 51; Sallares 1991,477; Bogucki 1993,498), though low area
yields are of course off-set by the capacity of oxen to cultivate a large area. Moreover, in

Bull. Sumerian Agric. 8 (1995) 11

Halstead Plough and power
assessing the productivity of ard agriculture in terms of yields per unit labour, the cost of
maintaining work oxen must also be taken into account (Bayliss-Smith 1982,107-8).
In an attempt to clarify the social significance of the ox-drawn ard in Mediterranean
prehistory and early history, this paper reviews a variety of evidence for the costs and benefits
of ard agriculture and manual cultivation. Because both costs and benefits are likely to differ
greatly between contrasting environments, the evidence reviewed is mostly drawn from the
circum-Mediterranean region.
The costs of maintaining work oxen
Large work animals such as oxen have both capital and running costs. The capital costs of
raising or buying young oxen obviously vary, depending on the number of female cattle kept
for breeding and dairy purposes (e.g. Bogucki 1993). In 19th century Greece, farmers paid the
equivalent of the purchase price of 1.2 ha of land or 40-45 sheep for a pair of oxen (Psikhogios
1987, 48), while some early 20th century farmers who bred their own oxen from the family
cow(s) waited several years to raise a full ploughing team (Halstead field notes [Assiros,
Central Macedonia]). For many farmers, therefore, neither buying nor raising oxen was easy.
Large animals also need significant areas of pasture, the availability of which inevitably
varies in accordance with differences in climate and soil, rural population density, land tenure
and land use. The animals may need to be taken to pasture throughout the year (e.g.
Aschenbrenner 1972, 52), though such day to day herding may be undertaken by children
without other major work commitments (e.g. du Boulay 1974, 246-7). In addition, work
animals must be fed supplementary, harvested fodder, especially during the working season
when their energy expenditure is high and time available for grazing is reduced. One study in
Greece (Halstead and Jones 1989) has documented some of the labour costs entailed in
providing harvested fodder for work animals. If crops are grown specifically for fodder,
additional human labour is required throughout the arable farming cycle from ploughing and
sowing through harvest to threshing and winnowing (fodder crops are usually threshed and
winnowed, because farmers feed the grain and straw to different animals in different
proportions at different times). Elderly farmers in northern Greece report sowing between 0.5
and 2 ha of bitter vetch specifically for the plough oxen, with the upper limit on the area sown
being set not by the nutritional demands of the oxen but by the availability of human labour for
harvesting this low and scrambling crop (Halstead field notes [Assiros, Central Macedonia]).
Much of the fodder for large work animals may be derived from the processing by-
products of crops grown for human consumption. Such by-products are often treated by
farmers as involving no cost (cf. Langdon 1986, 158-9), but they greatly increase the burden on
human labour at harvest and threshing time. Cereal crops are cut low to recover much of the
straw, making reaping both slower and more back-breaking and greatly increasing the volume
of crop to be transported from field to threshing floor. The crop to be threshed now consists
largely of straw rather than just of grain and chaff and, although much of the labour of
threshing is effected by the trampling of work animals' hooves, this remains a laborious task
and has to be undertaken at the hottest time of day when the midday sun makes the crop brittle.
Finally, because the light straw and chaff are needed as fodder, the threshed crop can only be
winnowed in a light breeze, thus significantly slowing down the cleaning of the crop (Halstead
and Jones 1989).
Plough and power
Halstead
In the Kingdom of Naples, capital and running costs together made a day's work by a pair
of oxen as expensive as that of ten labourers in the 18th century and of six labourers in the late
19th century (Delille 1977,147). Even if young male cattle, pasture and child labour for herding
are freely available, and even if additional grain crops are not sown, the use of food crop
residues as fodder enforces a substantial increase in agricultural work during the harvest and
threshing period of maximum labour stress. In making this substantial investment of labour, the
farmer is effectively 'storing labour' (cf. Rowley-Conwy and Zvelebil 1989, 49) by buying
'energy slaves' (Bayliss-Smith 1982,52-53) capable of considerable amounts of work during
the critical season of tillage and sowing in the autumn and winter. This point may be made clear
by comparing the areas cultivable by hand and by ox-drawn ard.
The benefits of oxen: tillage by hand and by ox-drawn ard
To ask how much land can be ploughed by a pair of oxen in a day is rather like asking 'How
long is a piece of string?'. The answer depends, inter alia, on the size and condition of the
oxen, the type of plough and plough share, the nature of the soil and terrain, the weather before
and during ploughing, when and how well the field was last ploughed, the spacing between
furrows, and the size, distance apart and distance from the farmer's base of individual fields.
Nonetheless, many cultures measure land in terms of a rule-of-thumb figure for the area which
can be ploughed in one day (e.g. Evans 1960, 40-41). The classical Roman unit of land
measurement, the jugerum (cf. jugum = 'yoke') represents 0.25 ha; in 19th century Greece, the
stremma ('turning' and hence area which oxen can plow in a day) varied locally between 0.09
and 0.16 ha (Psikhogios 1987, 24-25); and in various parts of the East Mediterranean, the
Turkish doniim (also 'turning') covered a similar range. Recent estimates of the area which can
be ploughed in a day by a pair of oxen range from 0.1 to 0.4 ha in 20th century Palestine and
Jordan (Russell 1988, 123 Table 27; Palmer and Russell 1993). Estimates from 20th century
Greece range from 0.1 to 0.3 ha, though the higher figures are sometimes linked to the use of
two or three pairs of oxen in rotation with one plough (Aschenbrenner 1972, 57; du Boulay
1974, 242; Halstead and Jones 1989; Halstead field notes [Assiros, Central Macedonia]). The
norm for ploughing in Mediterranean conditions under traditional technology, therefore, may be
regarded as roughly 0.1-0.3 hatday.
By contrast, estimates of the area which can be dug by hand with a variety of tools in
different parts of the world range between 0.02 and 0.05 hdday (Russell 1988, 114 Table 19).
In 19th century Greece an axinari, the area cultivable by hand in a day, was reckoned at ca. 0.05
ha (Psikhogios 1987, 34), while one estimate of the area cultivable manually by early 20th
century market ,gardeners in northern Greece suggests a range of 0.02-0.05 hdday (Halstead
field notes [Assiros, Central Macedonia]). In other words, tillage with an ox-drawn ard is
something like 2-15 times faster than manual cultivation. In effect, the greater speed of the ox-
drawn ard allows farmers to break one of the principal bottlenecks in the agricultural year - the
autumn and winter period of tillage. The increased scale of cultivation thus made possible has
radical implications for agricultural methods at subsequent stages in the crop growing cycle
(Halstead 1987b).
The implications of tillage by ox-drawn ard for subsequent stages of crop husbandry
First, a major increase in the area sown requires more rapid methods of sowing and, as a
consequence, ard-based agriculture tends to be associated with broadcast sowing (Sigaut 1975,
Halstead Plough and power
220-21), while small-scale manual cultivation tends to involve more precise but more labour-
intensive methods such as dibbling or planting. The disadvantage of broadcast sowing is that it
tends to use up twice as much seed corn as the more intensive methods (Halstead 1990).
Secondly, small-scale manual cultivation is often associated with relatively intensive husbandry
such as weeding by hand, whereas weeds tend to be controlled under large-scale ard-agriculture
by regular, ploughed fallowing. Thirdly, small-scale cultivation tends to be characterised by
annual cropping of land, often involving cereal-pulse rotation, while large-scale ard-agriculture
tends to specialise in the less labour-intensive cereal crops.
Thus two broad strategies may be distinguished (Halstead 1987b; 1992a):
(1) Manual cultivation, with intensive husbandry methods, is characterised by relatively
high area yields, but is small-scale and has high labour inputs, and so produces relatively little
surplus over and above what is needed to feed the human workforce involved.
(2) Ard cultivation, with extensive methods, is characterised by low area yields, but is
large-scale and has low human labour inputs, and so has the potential to produce a large
surplus. The greater capacity for surplus of ard agriculture is facilitated by the fact that a
significant part of the fodder for the critical work animals is made up by the processing by-
products of human food crops.
The harvesting problem
While more extensive methods of crop husbandry can be adopted to compensate for the larger
scale of ard agriculture, and while work animals can contribute to the transporting and threshing
of the crop after harvest, potential improvements in the speed of harvesting were limited before
the relatively recent introduction of true scythes and then of mechanical reaping machines.
A series of estimates by Greek farmers for reaping with sickles suggests normal cereal
harvesting speeds of UD to 0.1 hdman day. Slower rates are reported for pulses and also for
elderly workers, while some of the faster estimates exclude the labour of a second person (often
the wife of the reaper) engaged in binding the crop into sheaves (Halstead and Jones 1989,47;
Halstead field notes [Assiros, Central Macedonia]; Wagstaff and Augustson 1982, 131).
Figures from a variety of recent European and Near Eastern contexts (Russell 1988, 116-17,
Tables 20-21) suggest harvesting and binding speeds for cereals cut with a small- or medium-
sized iron sickle of ca. 0.05-0.1 hdman day. This compares with rather higher speeds for
ploughing with the ox-drawn ard of 0.1-0.3 hdday (above). Russell has also assembled figures
for possible reaping speeds with more primitive technology. Reaping experiments with flint,
obsidian, copper and bronze sickles suggest speeds of ca. 0.02-0.05 hatman day (Russell 1988,
116 Table 20), accentuating the contrast between ploughing and reaping rates.
In sum, an ox-drawn ard can plough more land in a day than one man can reap, but some of
the faster tillage rates may involve the labour of two persons (one to plough and one to sow)
and of course farming families commonly mobilise their entire work force at harvest time.
Where the farmer has a large family including several adult offspring, therefore, the area which
can be ploughed and sown per day with the aid of an ox-drawn ard and the area which can be
reaped per day by the family may be in balance. Where the farmer commands a small family
labour force, however, the implicatibn is that the services of additional reapers must be secured
or that the harvest season must be substantially longer than the ploughing season (perhaps
involving underuse of the oxen).
Halstead Plough and power
Up to a point, the length of the harvest season can be extended by growing a range of crops
with different maturation times, by staggering the sowing of each crop type and by sowing
crops in several fields differing in altitude, aspect and soil type (e.g. Forbes 1982). Once the
crop approaches ripeness, however, it must be harvested with some urgency, before the grain is
shed or robbed by birds or rodents (Halstead and Jones 1989). In Greece, before
mechanisation, the barley and wheat harvest might typically be spread over up to one month,
and this period might be extended to up to two months if the crops to be harvested included the
early-ripening pulses and the late-ripening oat, rye and millet. The pulses are usually sown on a
relatively small scale on large farms, however, and oat and rye are not yet attested as crops in , -
prehistoric Greece and millet only rarely so (Halstead 1992a, 108 Table 1; 1994,204-5 Table
7.1). By contrast, the winter ploughing season in Greece might typically extend over one to
three or even four months between October and February, depending on how early the autumn
rains began in a given year and how much time was lost because the ground was too wet, heavy
or frozen for cultivation (Aschenbrenner 1972,50-51; du Boulay 1974,242; Kostis 1993,41;
Halstead and Jones 1989; Halstead field notes [Assiros, Central Macedonia]). Consideration of
the relative lengths of the harvesting and ploughing seasons, therefore, again accentuates the
contradiction between the ploughing potential of a pair of oxen and the harvesting constraints
imposed by a family labour force.
More meaningful than a comparison between daily ploughing and reaping rates is a
comparison of the area which can be ploughed and harvested per year, though estimates of
these figures are of course greatly complicated by variation in family size and structure and in
the length of the ploughing and harvesting seasons. Nonetheless, some regularities again
emerge.
The scale of tillage and harvesting possible on a family farm
For 20th century northern Greece, recent estimates by several elderly farmers suggest that the
maximum area cultivable per family per year by hand was ca 3 ha and the maximum with oxen
ca 10 ha, of which about half would be in winter cereals and half fallow or in summer crops
(Halstead field notes [Assiros, Central Macedonia]). Figures from Byzantine times are broadly
comparable: average allocations per ox pair of 8 ha and 15 ha (including fallow or summer
crops) are recorded (Harvey 1989,50-51,140), while farmers without oxen were allocated one
quarter the area of land assigned to those with a pair of oxen (Harvey 1989,52). An average
allocation of 10 ha per ploughman is also recorded for a 17th century estate in Macedonia
(Moskof 1979,60-62).
For southern Italy, two parliamentary enquiries into late 19th century and early 20th century
agriculture offer further comparative data (Delille 1977, 123). In the rich plains of Campania,
where a pasture-maize-wheat-oat rotation was practised, a farmer with oxen might take on 10 ha
(presumably 5 ha in winter cereals), while a tenant farmer without oxen might take on a
maximum of 2-3 ha (Delille 1977, 128). In the less fertile Appenine hills and in large parts of
Apulia, under more extensive conditions of husbandry, the areas which might be farmed are ca
10 ha with oxen and up to 4-5 ha with manual cultivation (Delille 1977, 129). In the area of
Crotone, a family without oxen could not rent more than 4 ha (Delille 1977, 136 n 89). Finally,
in the Auvergne region of France, where oxen were used for ploughing until ca. 1950, farmers
were able to cultivate up to 5-6 ha of winter cereals with one pair of oxen (Halstead field notes
wireflews village]).
Halstead Plough and power
Again comparison with the area which can be harvested by a family labour force is
illuminating. In theory, at a rate of 0.1 hdday, a recent Greek reaper armed with a sickle
could cut up to 3 ha of wheat and barley during a harvest season of one month; a family of two
active parents and two grown sons could cut up to 12 ha. As noted above, however, the
maximum figure of 0.1 hdday was probably only attainable by the most fit, industrious and
skilled reapers, and perhaps ignores the labour involved in binding the crop. Farmers suggest
that 1-2 ha of winter cereals per reaper is a more realistic figure for a harvest season (Halstead
field notes [Assiros, Central Macedonia]). Moreover, the family will have to divide its labour
force between harvesting, transport of the crop to the threshing floor, and normal maintenance
activity with livestock, while time may also be lost if the crop is wet by summer rain. In
practice, estimates by recent Greek farmers suggest that the maximum area of winter cereals
which can be harvested by a reasonably active family is about 4 ha, perhaps 6 ha for a large
family with adult offspring (Halstead field notes [Assiros, Central Macedonia] ; also du Boulay
1974, 242). The maximum harvesting capacity of a family labour force, therefore, at a
favourable point in the domestic cycle, barely matches the normal cultivation potential of a pair
of oxen. Further light may be shed on these figures by attempting an even more problematic
estimate of the minimum areas in cultivation necessary to support a family and to justify the
keeping of a pair of oxen.
The minimum size of a viable family farm
Delille (1977, 132) estimates that, in southern Italy, 4-5 ha in a two-year cereal-fallow rotation
would suffice to support a family of 4-5 persons (including some allowance for payment of
taxes and other expenses, but not for the consequences of a bad harvest): the Mediterranean
smallholder working the land by hand can only cultivate enough for bare survival (Delille 1977,
135). On the other hand, it may be inappropriate (see above) to extrapolate the extensive
husbandry methods and low area yields of large scale cereal agriculture to a smallholding
cultivated by hand. With intensive hoeing, weeding and perhaps watering and manuring, and
with cereal-pulse rotation, a small holder might well produce average yields approaching 1
tonlha. In a prehistoric context, therefore, a farmer unencumbered by the need to pay taxes in
money, might well be able to feed a family of 4-5 persons (needing, say, 1.5 tons of graidyear)
from as little as 2-3 ha of intensively cultivated land. Hopkins (cited in White 1970, 336)
similarly calculated the minimum area to support a Roman farming family at 2 ha without oxen.
A family subsistence requirement of 2-3 ha of winter cereals is reported from 19th century and
20th century Greece (Psikhogios 1987, 39 n 13; Halstead field notes [Assiros, Central
Macedonia]). In other words, the area needed to support the family of a 'subsistence farmer' (ca
2-3 ha) is comparable with the areas which a family labour force can cultivate by hand (ca 2-4
ha) and harvest (up to 4 ha). Conversely, a farmer making full use of the cultivation potential of
a pair of oxen (5+ ha of winter cereals) is likely to be supporting a very large family or
producing a substantial surplus.
Finally, is it possible to estimate the area in cultivation necessary to justify the keeping of
oxen, given the substantial if highly variable costs involved? Recent farmers in a part of
northern Greece traditionally dominated by cereals, and whose own experience dates to the
period in the earlier 20th century when large estates were dissolved and the land redistributed to
large numbers of smallholders, suggested that ownership of a pair of oxen was only economic
on holdings exceeding 3-4 ha (Halstead fieldnotes); below this level, farmers would variously
Halstead Plough and power
share or rent oxen, use cows or equids or cultivate by hand (see below). The minimum holdings
of the classical Athenian hoplite class, the zeugitai (i.e. ox-farmers), have similarly been
estimated at ca 4-5 ha (Isager and Skydsgaard 1992, 79; also Foxhall 1992; Jarneson 1992;
Osborne 1992, 24), while Hopkins (cited in White 1970, 336) has suggested a minimum
requirement of 5 ha for a Roman farmer with oxen.
Delille (1977, 135) emphasises the inability of the smallholder, in the Mediterranean as a
whole, to raise large livestock. As a result, ownership of oxen has often been highly restricted.
In early 19th century Greece, only one third of farmers possessed oxen and in 1860 there was
an average of only one ox per farmer; many farmers cultivated by hand (Psikhogios 1987,47).
Conversely, much of the cereal land in 19th century Greece was in the hands of large, ox-
powered estates (Vergopoulos 1975) or 'chifliks' - from the Turkish ~ i for t 'pair' [of oxen] (cf.
Asdrakhas 1978,41-43). A similar contrast between numerous small-holdings, too small to
justify the keeping of oxen, and a few large estates with oxen is apparent for Byzantine Greece
(Harvey 1989,63-64,71). Likewise, while many 19th century Italian farmers cultivated small
holdings by hand, in Calabria in 1811 70% of the 13,750 oxen were in herds of 100-1200 head
(Delille 1977, 136), that is attached to very substantial agricultural estates.
The economic implications of keeping plough oxen
The implication of these various calculations is that, as regards the growing of grain crops, the
'traditional' Mediterranean farmer has been trapped between the minimum scale needed to
justify the keeping of plough oxen and the maximum scale of harvest manageable with the
labour force of a normal family. In other words, for all but the largest families at the most
favourable point in the domestic cycle, farmers were faced with the choice of growing grain
crops by hand on a scale sufficient for subsistence, or of investing in a pair of oxen, hiring
outside labour at harvest time and producing a substantial surplus of grain for the market.
In practice, of course, a number of alternative strategies are possible between these two
extremes. First, the preceding discussion has avoided defining a 'typical' farming family. A
nuclear family household may only temporarily muster the harvesting labour needed to match
the ploughing potential of a good pair of oxen (while offspring are grown up but still attached
to the parental household), but more extended 'stem' or 'compound' families, consisting of two
or three generations under the same roof, were not uncommon in 19th-20th century Greece
(Psikhogios 1987, 97-1 12). Such households can muster a relatively large and continuous
labour force, but may also include enough consumers to neutralise the surplus producing
potential of a pair of oxen.
Secondly, in recent decades, Greek farmers with too little land to maintain oxen have
usually ploughed with a pair of cows, a cow and a donkey, or a mule rather than resorting to
manual cultivation. In this case, the capital and running costs of oxen are reduced by yoking a
dual purpose animal, also used for milking or transport. Elderly farmers are in almost
unanimous agreement, however, that the use of non-specialist plough animals greatly limits
both the quantity and quality of ploughing, while also jeopardising the productivity of the cow
in milk and calves, and making the donkey or mule unavailable for other work. Some
smallholders have instead shared or hired oxen, but both solutions again limit the possible scale
of cultivation and also mean that the farmer has only partial control over when he ploughs and
sows and so incurs greater risk of crop failure or low yields (Halstead field notes [Assiros,
Central Macedonia; Naxos]). As a result, grain production in much of the Mediterranean in
Halstead Plough and power
early modern times has tended to be undertaken either by smallholders producing, at best,
enough for subsistence or by large estates producing on a large scale, and with minimal input of
human labour, for market (Delille 1977; Psikhoyios 1987; Vergopoulos 1975).
The social implications of keeping plough oxen
The preceding discussion has documented a close relationship between the use of plough oxen
and large-scale cereal agriculture with extensive methods of husbandry. It is now possible to re-
evaluate, in a Mediterranean context, Goody's suggestions as to the causal relationship between
the plough and social stratification. As Goody noted, the ox-drawn plough permits large-scale
surplus production and so enables the support of non-producers, such as an elite and its
retainers; extensive plough agriculture is also 'wasteful7of land (compared to intensive manual
cultivation) and so promotes land shortage, which in turn makes possible uneven access to land.
In addition, at least under the scheduling constraints of Mediterranean climate, ox-based
agriculture geared to surplus production of grain requires the existence of an external force of
landless or otherwise dependent labourers at harvest time. The use by plough owners of fallow
as a substitute for labour-intensive, manual control of weeds also presupposes preferential
access to scarce land, while the costs of raising and maintaining oxen, in most parts of the
Mediterranean, are prohibitively high for most farmers engaged in 'subsistence' cultivation.
Social stratification thus emerges,pace Goody, as a precondition as well as consequence of ox-
based agriculture in the Mediterranean (also Gudeman 1977). Finally, while both the
anthropological and archaeological literature tends to be concerned with the relationship
between the plough (or ard) and social complexity (Goody 1976; Sherratt 1981), the foregoing
discussion suggests that the critical variable is ownership of specialised plough oxen and not
mere use of the ard (also Braudel1975,77; Spurr 1986,171).
Conclusion
In the context of European or Near Eastern prehistory, therefore, it would not be appropriate to
assign great social significance to archaeological evidence for the existence of the ard or yoked
pairs of cattle or even for the practice of ploughing (see Rowley-Conwy 1987). On the other
hand, references in the Linear B records of the late bronze age palaces of southern Greece to
pairs of working oxen are more significant.
First, working oxen were concentrated near major centres and sub-centres, as were
recorded palace land holdings and cereal harvests, suggesting a connection between oxen and
palatial agriculture. Similarly, some palatial land was allocated in units of ca 5 ha, that is of a
size suitable for cultivation with a pair of oxen. Secondly, palatial records of grain harvest are
restricted to one type of cereal, suggesting extensive agriculture, in sharp contrast with the
archaeobotanical record, which suggests a balanced mixture of various cereals and pulses more
characteristic of small-scale, intensive husbandry. Textual and bio-archaeological evidence in
combination, therefore, suggest that, while much of the population practised intensive
horticulture, the palaces (like the land-owning elites of the early modern Mediterranean) were in
large measure supported by the surplus grain produced on large, extensively farmed estates,
cultivated by plough oxen (Halstead 1992a; 1992b).
While prehistorians tend to emphasise the role of economic intensification in supporting
early states, it is tempting to speculate, on theoretical grounds, that extensive ard-agriculture
played a major role in financing the surplus necessary to support many Near Eastern
Halstead Plough and power
civilisations. In 3rd millennium BC Mesopotamia, the contrast between texts overwhelmingly
concerned with one cereal and a diverse archaeobotanical record (Halstead 1990) again hints at
specialised administrative involvement in extensive agriculture. In Sumerian literature, the
association of the plough with gods and kings likewise suggests an elite context for extensive
agriculture (Vanstiphout 1984,242-3; Hruska 1992,73), while the disputation poem between
the hoe and the plough concludes that, for Sumerian society as a whole, the hoe was more
important (Vanstiphout 1984,247).
-
Acknowledgements
Attendance at the Wassenaar meeting of the Sumerian Agriculture Group was assisted by a
grant from Sheffield University Foreign Travel Fund. The British Academy funded fieldwork
in Greek Macedonia in 1993, during which interviews were conducted with elderly farmers
who had worked on Turkish chiflik estates in the first two decades of this century. I am grateful
to Yannis Hamilakis, Nicholas Postgate and Tom Williamson for useful bibliographic
suggestions, and to Carol Palmer for drawing my attention to the meaning of the Turkish
doniim.
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In principle two routes are available to us:
1. We can analyse and study products made by nomads in that area and compare the
properties of these products with the ones mentioned in the ancient texts (Anderegg, 1894;
Mair-Waldburg, 1974).
2. We can try to prepare such products in the laboratory to find out whether the necessary
conditions coincide with conditions presumably prevailing in Mesopotamia 3000 to 5000 years
ago.
The reason why we can be quite confident about this approach is the fact that the
biochemical composition of milk (of different species) has not significantly changed since that
time. In addition, the scientific progress during the last 100 years in dairy science has yielded so
much experience and knowledge that we are able to predict (even retrospectively) what happens
to milk and its components when specific actions are taken, e.g. spontaneous fermentation with
lactic acid bacteria, heating or boiling, churning, draining of whey (milk serum), ripening or
drying of curd (Teuber, 1993; Teuber et al. 1987).

First I shall give a brief explanation of the properties of milk. The composition depends on
the animal species and is given in Table 1. The main chemical fractions determining the
biochemical and nutritional properties are accordingly:

1 Water (about 85 to 90%)

2 Protein (3 to 3.5%)
The protein fraction is composed of 2 completely different kinds of molecules:

2.1 The caseins

They are organized in micelles together with minerals (mainly calcium phosphate and
potassium), and citric acid.
The casein micelles (50 to 300 pm in size, about loi4 per ml) are in colloidal solution and
stable at boiling temperatures. Caseins, however, are precipitated (coagulated and denaturated)

Bull. Sumerian Agric. 8 (1995)