Agricultural History Review, Volume 63 Part 1 (2015), p. 181

‘What does “farmer” mean?’ Alexis answered his own question: ‘two oxen ahead and one ox behind’; in Greek, vódhi (ox) symbolizes stupidity rather than strength (p. 11).

‘Two oxen ahead and one behind’. No other phrase could better summarize the condition of Greek agriculture during the period dealt with in this outstanding, in all respects, book by the eminent archaeologist-anthropologist-ethnologist and historian Paul Halstead. Simultaneously, the very same phrase he chooses as a title for his book epitomizes/condenses, and signifies the profound interest and affection the writer deals with his subject.

But, let us take things from the beginning. This book is the result of the long-time acquaintance, and better still, involvement of the writer with the rural society or, more precisely, with the remote, poor and disadvantageous rural communities of the Mediterranean south, especially Greece. This fact is itself particularly interesting for all those studying the evolution of rural society and its history.

The book is an ideal recording of rural occupations, of cultivation methods, as well as of the underlying ideas and attitudes inherent in the farming practice, all of which the author conveys in a direct and vivid manner. Halstead does not talk with his informants simply to record their views, but he also communicates with them in a directly experiential, almost bodily, way. This fact is revealed apart from anything else, by his familiarity with and interest in his interlocutors, referring to them by their first names or even by their nicknames.

Simultaneously, the book declares the writer’s wider interest in the humble and despised, insular, mountainous and disadvantages areas of Greece and the Mediterranean at a turning point: on the borderline between primitive or traditional and modern or latently modernized agriculture, through the introduction of mechanization and innovation, which has been slow and tortuous process both in Greece and in the other regions on which the writer focuses. Equally slow and laborious has been the transition from the state of a peasant to that of a farmer – to recall Stathis Damianakos, another researcher of the Mediterranean rural space La paysan grec. Défis et adaptations face à la société moderne (Paris, L’ Harmattan, 1996).

This transition – in the case of Greece at least – was never accomplished. It remained incomplete or in abeyance, particularly in the semi-mountainous and disadvantaged areas – which are the writer’s field of analysis – thus rendering agricultural production ‘something between subsistence husbandry […] and micro-commodity “capitalist” agriculture’, while for a large number of farmers, farming remained ‘a given social state of being, to which they submit due to lack of other reliable options’, as Damianakos points out. In this respect, rural areas and rural society form an ideal field for ethnographical-anthropological observation.

The book is divided in seven chapters in which all phases of agricultural work and practice are analyzed thoroughly: from cultivation, sowing and harvesting, to the management and planning of rural means and resources. The writer provides sufficient information on the broader intellectual and cultural background, carefully setting people and their stories (or their destinies, I would dare say) in a solid historical and cultural context. The information and details he gives on cultivation practices, sowing methods and farming systems are so exhaustive that only a specialist agriculturist could appreciate their width and wealth. Furthermore, the writer’s citations are literally a parade of numerous –and definitely the most significant– folklorists, ethnologists and scientists specializing in the rural world, therefore offering an extremely useful bibliographical guide.

On the other hand, I have to stress the fact that the writer’s chosen view provides us with a specific picture of rural Greece and Mediterranean. It is a rural iconography, almost frozen in time and space, which remains primitive in the late twentieth century. However, it is significant (and worthy of further investigation) that this particular region – rural Greece and the Mediterranean – does not seem to communicate in any way, cross with or be affected by, the scientific and/or practical knowledge produced in university departments and several agricultural research institutes and foundations, which had already developed to a great extent during the inter-war period and the first post-war decades with the precise purpose of promoting and disseminating scientific (primarily, but not only, agronomic) knowledge in the rural world.

Nevertheless, this does not diminish, but on the contrary it increases, the charm and uniqueness of the book. Through this unique conjunction of archaeology, anthropology, ethnography and oral history, Paul Halstead reminds us that this rural civilization emerging alive from the lines of his book was so material, handmade, made of stone, sun and earth, so theoctistos. He offers us the essence of a lifetime of research and experience, together with his love and admiration for a civilization which gradually perishes with its people, if it has not disappeared already.