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8
AgRICULTURAL PRODUCTION AND
DOMESTIC ACTIVITIES IN RURAL
HELLENISTIC gREECE
Evi Margaritis
Introduction
The countryside (chora) played a fundamental role in the production of food
and has been rightly characterised as essential for the economy of Ancient
Greece (Alcock 2007 ). Until recently, however, it has been somewhat unex-
plored, due in no small part to a lack of attention in major programmes of
excavation and scientifically based archaeological methodologies. As a result,
agricultural practices and the economy have been mainly approached through
the written sources, specific kinds of archaeological material, such as installa-
tions, and the ethnographic record. This dataset has been strengthened through
regional survey, aerial photography and satellite imagery (Alcock 2007 ), the lat-
ter helping particularly in the identification of ancient field systems. Intensive
surveys have made great progresses in methodology, have now sampled many
areas of Greece and have reached the point where rural landscapes are starting
to tell their own story concerning organisation, occupation patterns, farming
strategies and population change (e.g., Bintliff and Snodgrass 1985 ; Wright
et al. 1990 ; Cherry et al. 1991 ; Mee and Forbes 1997 ; Cavanagh et al. 2002 ;
Alcock 2007 ; Lolos 2011 ). Apart from the general information and trends of
the field surveys, however, research on regional agricultural, economic and
social development has yet to be approached through the targeted interroga-
tion of groups of sites.