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

120

FRANQOIS SIGAUT

EUROPEAN SYSTEMS OF THRESHING
Time and place of threshing
Power used in threshing
Human power only
Animal power
_ ,. Open-air
Immediate
Atlantic Coast
Mediterranean
Indoors
-
North Hungarian
Delayed Open’air
-
-
Indoors
North European

The most historically significant of those
systems were based on sickle reaping and the
making of sheaves, and the main features nec-
essary to distinguish them from each other
were the following:
- immediate vs. delayed threshing, implying
the storage of grain in bulk (threshed) or in
sheaves (unthreshed) respectively;
- open-air vs. indoor threshing;
- threshing using human power vs. animal
power.
These features can be combined in eight dif-
ferent ways theoretically, but in my paper, I
described three systems only, which I called
Mediterranean, North European, and Atlan-
tic Coast system respectively. What about the
five other combinations? The best way to
make them out is to have a look at the table
above, where all the theoretical combinations
are gathered:
The combinations corresponding with the
three boxes marked (-) are probably impos-
sible, at least in European conditions. By its
very nature, delayed threshing can hardly be
executed in the open, except perhaps in com-
pletely rainless climates not to be found
within the boundaries of Europe. And con-
versely, when threshing is done indoors by
the use of human power only, there is no
point in hurrying to thresh the whole harvest
at once, since the very aim of the system is to

allow the work to be done day in day out. I
know of no example to fill the three boxes left
void, and my guess is that none will be found.
But having the grain trodden out by ani-
mals indoors is a combination that does exist,
and since its importance is comparable to that
of the Atlantic Coast system of Western
France, I should not have ignored it in my
paper. I have called this system “North Hun-
garian” because it is well documented in
Northern Hungary and neighbouring Slova-
kia (Paladi-Kovacs 1987, Selmeczi Kovacs
1976, Urbancova 1976). But there is also an
example from as far away as Southern Chile
(Golte 1973:61), suggesting that this system
may have been practised in other European
settlements overseas as well. I have supposed
in the table that threshing by the North Hun-
garian system was done immediately after the
harvest, and I have therefore left the other
possible box for it (delayed threshing - in-
doors - animal power) with a question mark.
But the fact is that I simply do not know, and
further information is needed.
The Mediterranean and North European
systems are diametrically opposed in many of
their features. The Atlantic Coast and North
Hungarian systems stand in between, like hy-
brids so to speak, and their rather limited ar-
eal distribution suggests that they were prob-
ably not optimal solutions economically. As I
have already pointed out, their early history