Description
We've asked Dr Maeve McHugh, Associate Professor in Classical Archaeology, to answer some common questions about what life was like for a farmer in Ancient Greece.
Dr Maeve McHugh is an archaeologist specialising in the Greek Archaic to Classical periods and the author of Agricultural Labour and Lived Experience in Ancient Greece: Sweat and Hunger. In her book, Dr McHugh explores the experience of labour for ancient Greek farming communities using historical, archaeological, bioarchaeological, and ethnographic data. She offers a compelling and methodologically innovative approach using the moral economy, taskscapes, and embodiment as interpretative frames.
Reconstructing the lived experience of ancient farmers, the book defines the physical, conceptual, and ideological contours of the farmer’s world. It highlights the complex, embedded, and entangled nature of Greek agrarian life and draws on a wide range of interdisciplinary evidence to create a cultural history of rural labour. By moving beyond economic abstractions, the study reframes agricultural labour as a meaningful social and bodily practice, central to identity, community, and survival.
Chapters:
00:00: Introduction
00:42: What did a typical day look like for a farmer in ancient Greece?
01:25: What was a typical diet in ancient Greece?
02:02: What crops
were most important in ancient Greece?
02:36: Did ancient Greek farmers
use animals for labor?
02:58: Did
ancient Greek farmers own their own land?
03:30: What gods were important to farmers?
03:57: What role did women
play in ancient Greek farming?
04:29: How hard was farming in ancient
Greece compared to today?
04:56: What tools did ancient Greek farmers use?
05:24: Did ancient Greek farmers go to war?
06:04: How wealthy were farmers in ancient
Greece?
06:39: How did seasons affect
daily life for Greek farmers?
07:20: How did ancient Greek farmers
store and preserve food?
08:04: Did children work on farms
in ancient Greece?
08:39: How different was farming in Athens
versus Sparta?
09:13: What was the hardest part
of being a farmer in ancient Greece?