EDITORIAL

Tools and Tillage has been created in response to a need that has
been long felt by scholars working in a number of overlapping disciplines,
especially ethnologists, ethnographers, anthropologists, archaeologists,
cultural geographers and historians, as well as linguists, philologists, and
lexicographers. The Journal will attempt to provide a background of ma-
terial culture with reference to matters that have been fundamental in
economic life from the beginnings of agriculture, namely the tilling of the
soil, the structure of the fields, the treatment of the crops that are grown
in them, and the historical and geographical distribution of implements.
This will be interpreted in relation to geographical environment, social
settings, and historical records such as wills and inventories. Over the
years it will provide a practical handbook of comparative information of
world wide value.
The primary emphasis will be on material relating to Europe and
such areas as have influenced or have been influenced by Europe, by con-
tacts within recent centuries, and with regard to the historical develop-
ment of agriculture through its actual practice and through written theory.
In this way Tools and Tillage can consider, inter alia, links between
China and Europe, and between Europe and the New World.
Cumulative lists of current datings of implements by means of radio-
carbon and other modem techniques will be given regularly, and there
will be notes and news relating to current problems of research, and short
reviews of relevant books. For easy reference, each volume, consisting of
four numbers, will have a subject index.
The Journal is sponsored by The International Secretariat for Re-
search on the History of Agricultural Implements, and the Commission of
the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters for Research on the
History of Agricultural Implements and Field Structures. It will be
printed in English and German.