Agricultural History Review, Volume 55 Part 2 (2007), p. 327

Perrine Mane’s book is a study of medieval agrarian techniques as represented in the iconographical evidence, and is the outcome of more than twenty years of work. Its intended audience is archaeologists and historians interested in tools and farming techniques. The book focuses on the study of the realia represented in iconography, and how it compares with the evidence of contemporary textual sources and archaeological findings, rather than on the iconographical material for its own sake.

The documentation involved is huge. Perrine Mane’s study is based on more than 15,000 images ranging from the ninth century to the beginning of the sixteenth and covering a large part of western Europe, including France, England, Germany, Bohemia, Italy and Spain. The author surveys sculptures and paintings on monuments, tapestries, ivory carvings, seals, enamels, and, above all, illuminations and engravings illustrating a great variety of books from the Bible to medieval agricultural treatises, medieval encyclopaedias, medieval herbaries and bestiaries, armorials, astrological treatises showing the effects of planets on everyday rural life, and medieval legal sources dealing with agrarian practice. Due to the lack of historical sensitivity on the part of medieval iconographers, illuminations found in medieval copies of Roman books (such as Columella’s or Palladius’s agricultural treatises or Virgil’s poetry) show peasants dressed in medieval garments and using contemporary tools.

Perrine Mane’s book is in three parts. The first deals with the sources, and the problem of determining the date and origin of the images. The second part, which covers the production of crops, is divided into three chapters: the successive stages of cereal cultivation from ploughing to conservation of the crop; viticulture and winemaking; and more specialist crops such as Leguminosae, textile plants, herbaries and garden plants, fruit cultivation, tree felling and coppicing. The author draws on textual sources to cover important stages in agriculture’s production chain (manuring the fields for example) which are usually missing in the i conographical record.

The third part is devoted to domestic animals and wildlife. The first chapter deals with sources of animal fodder including meadows and the use of scythes to mow hay crops, the second with animal husbandry (cattle, horses, donkeys and mules, pigs, sheep, goats, poultry, and bee-keeping), and the third with hunting and fishing.

Iconographical sources give us a unique opportunity to understand better not just the materials of past agricultural practice but their mode of use. Their drawback is a lack of specificity with respect to place and time. Perrine Mane relies on the evidence of calendars to substantiate her argument that this iconographical material to some extent reflected local practices. Harvesting was usually represented in July in France, but in June in Italy and Spain, and in August in England and Flanders. This shows a degree of sensitivity to local conditions. Regional variations appear to be captured for some of the techniques represented, such as ploughing, threshing, the slaughtering of pigs, and the form of bee-hives.

Perrine Mane’s book provides a comprehensive picture of medieval farming practices and peasant life, largely on the evidence of iconography but also drawing extensively on medieval agricultural treatises and other sources. A forty-page bibliography gives a wealth of references to recent publications – mainly in French. The subject index is most welcome, and will prove very useful for historians and archaeologists looking for in-formation on specific tools, domestic animals or farming techniques.