Tilling the hateful earth : agricultural production and trade in the late antique East / by Michael Decker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Decker, Michael.

Series:

Oxford studies in Byzantium

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Agriculture--Economic aspects--Middle East--History.

Agriculture.

Historic agricultural landscapes--Middle East.

Historic agricultural landscapes.

Agriculture--Economic aspects.

History.

Mediterranean Region--History--To 476.

Mediterranean Region.

Middle East--History--To 622.

Middle East.

Physical Description:

xxvii, 326 pages : illustrations, maps ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2009.

Summary:

Tilling the Hateful Earth explores farming in the countryside of the most prosperous region of the late Roman empire, the eastern provinces governed from the new capital of Constantinople. From the fourth to the sixth centuries, this region experienced a cultural efflorescence and material prosperity that would rarely be matched until modernity. Behind this prosperity lay the productive capacities of the land which was exploited to its maximum by its cultivators.

Using both archaeological and textual evidence, Michael Decker examines the nature of the late antique countryside and the ways in which farmers possessed and managed the land. The only surviving farming handbook of Graeco-Roman Late Antiquity, the Geoponica, sheds considerable light on the way farmers divided their year, the crops they planted, and the ways they intensified their efforts to ensure a return from the land. Far from the static or degraded landscape typically envisioned by students of the late antique world, the Geoponica and material remains depict a thriving countryside and landowners who were adventurous in their use of new plants and methods and eager to derive profit from the most important cash crops of the day.

The age-old heart of the Mediterranean diet-grain, olive oil, and wine-provides a portal whereby to view the activities of farmers and traders during this period. Olive orchards and vineyards dominated much of the landscape, the produce of which fed the burgeoning city populations of the eastern provinces. The wines and oil from the region were also enjoyed from Britain to India, and stimulated this great flowering of trade at the end of the ancient world.

Contents:

1 The Land: Climate and Geography 7

2 The Countryside in Late Antiquity 28

3 Hand to Mouth: Grain in Late Antiquity 80

4 The Vine 121

5 The ‘Queen of All Trees’: The Olive in Late Antique Agriculture 149

6 Invading the Desert: Irrigation and Agrarian Expansion 174

7 Mixed Farming and Limited Specialization: Methods and Means of Intensification 204

8 Trade, Agriculture, and the Economy of the Late Antique East 228.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780199565283

0199565287

OCLC:

316430311