Tools & tillage: a journal on the history of the implements of cultivation and other agricultural processes (6.1988/1991)

EDITORIAL

Just as good scholars should continually seek
to penetrate more and more deeply the evi-
dence that comes before them, so also does
Tools and Tillage, try to emulate them. In this
issue we travel far in time and place, seeking
through words and things to disentangle (as
we would like to think) aspects of the early
history of mankind which, in terms of mate-
rial culture, show broadly parallel forms of
development, regardless of race and creed.
The essential fellowship of races is something
we should not forget, though we may have to
seek it through the material bases of exist-
ence. Nor should scholars who constitute an
elite by the very fact of being scholarly, forget
that the spiritual, technical and technological
story of mankind is what their work throws
light on.
The contributions in the present issue of
Tools and Tillage inspired these philosophical
thoughts. Wang Xing-guang’s article on the
Chinese plough is especially valuable to us
because it is written by a home scholar, not
one looking at a culture from outside. He de-
scribes not only the actual ploughing imple-
ments but also their techniques of use, differ-
entiating between man-pulled and ox-drawn
implements. The excellent information he
gives on oxen will be new to many; and for
Western European scholars, the reference to
literature, including Chinese classical writ-
ings that go back to BC times, are most valua-
ble.
Gyula Wojtilla’s work on the ard-plough in
early India is the most specifically linguistic
study we have yet published in our Journal,
though we have always incorporated linguis-
tic data where appropriate. We are fully aware
of the difficulties of relating words to things

at periods when the material evidence is
sparse and only available from excavated
sources, but where early texts exist as in In-
dia, we would be mad not to try to squeeze as
much information out of them as we can.
One step we have tried is to keep separate the
ard and the plough, without or with mould-
board (where the sources are reasonably
clear), and in this modest way we may help to
move towards more specific interpretation of
terminology. We can also help by applying
knowledge of techniques of use of imple-
ments, reflected in their functional parts, to
the data linguists deal with. Such interdisci-
plinary activity is important for the develop-
ing study of material culture and language
alike.
Magdalena Beranova provides us with a
view of prehistoric Bohemia. By looking at
the evidence for early Iron Age cultivating as
well as harvesting implements and grain
grinding equipment, she brings together a
complex of interrelated economic activities
which, starting at household level, range
more widely to become part of the processes
of trade and exchange. The experimental
work she describes in reconstructing an early
scythe and assessing its capabilities is, like the
study of words, another important means of
interpreting the realities of past existence.
What this issue says overall - as other is-
sues do also - is that scholarship profits from
interconnections. We cannot understand the
cultivating implements of an area properly
without also looking at the functioning of
such implements and at the purposes (crop-
ping) at which they are aimed; and one area
ties in with or can have parallels with other
areas. One thing leads to another, one thing