Byzantine Agricultural Implements: The Evidence of Medieval Illustrations of Hesiod's Works and Days
Anthony Bryer
It is argued that Byzantine manuscript illustrations to Hesiod's eighth-century BC poem offer realistic evidence for the appearance and function of common Medieval agricultural implements, which there little other record. Fourteen manuscripts illustrated from tenth sixteenth centuries AD are analysed in Table on p. 67. In them seventeen implements not named text may be regarded as contemporary pictures, also true six Hesiod describes, traditional textual or arthistorical rules hardly apply these rustic drawings. Using methodology K. D. White's studies Roman farming, pictorial, literary, documentary, scanty archaeological evidence, together with survivals, applied twenty-three alone. Conclusions Byzantines have introduced an eliktrin spade-fork, possibly a wheel structure, but article must read within context Roman, Western later Mediterranean technology means peasant production, it offers only first step largely unexplored field.
The Annual of the British School at Athens