Wellmann Imre szerk.: A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum Közleményei 1971-1972 (Budapest, 1973)

Steensberg, Axel: The practice of tilling spades in Asia and Europe

THE PRACTICE OF TILLING SPADES IN ASIA AND EUROPE AXEL STEENSBERG (Lyngby, Denmark) In the year 1931, 40 years ago, PAUL LESER published his now classical work "Entstehung und Verbreitung des Pfluges" which the International Secretariat for Research on the History of Agricultural Implements has recently re-published in a photographic print in addition with a biography of its author and a bibliography of his works. In this work LESER suggested that the plough originated from the traction-spade, and that the practice of traction of the tilling implements should be older than the fully developed high-culture. The last suggestion has been proved I think by different examples in the meantime. The first assumption is right in general terms. However, later investigations have proved that the traction spade rather is a nephew of the plough — or the ard properly spoken. The traction spade is used like a proper spade, stuck into soil but pulled up by aid of a rope and this movement repeated sidewards. This movement is quite different from the continuated movement of the head of the ard. The traction spade produces its furrow by the sidewards movement, and all the soil is heaped on one side of the furrow only, while the ard moves forward pushing the soil up to both sides. A direct predecessor of the ard is probably the rope-traction ard which I have published from the Bronze Age in Hama, Syria, c. 2300—1900 B.C. — even if the ard was known already before this evidence in the Near East. Recently I visited an excavation at Kalibangan in the state of Rajasthan, India, in which the archaeologist Dr. B.B. LAL had uncovered a pattern of ardfurrows crossed by irrigation ditches covered by layers of the Harrappa culture c. 2000 B.C. For the first time ard-furrows have been found in this part of the world, and I suggest that they could be found below several "Tells" in the Near East if properly excavated. PAUL LESER's observation that the use of ropes in connection with spades was a special adaption for Asia is correct. However, the idea of traction is not directly connected with the shape of the working part of the spade which in fact differs according to practical demands within the distribution zone of the traction spade. This covers a wide area from Japan and Korea to the Middle East. In neither Europe nor Africa has it been generally accepted. Therefore I have elsewhere put forward the idea that the ard originated from some kind of rope-traction ard inside Asia, but it could have happened in widely separated areas and at different points of time, because the idea was so familiar to most peasants in the regions. And often would the rope-traction ard be pulled by