1st Edition

Agricultural Labour and Lived Experience in Ancient Greece Sweat and Hunger

By Maeve McHugh Copyright 2026
212 Pages 14 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

212 Pages 14 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book explores the experience of labour for ancient Greek farming communities using historical, archaeological, bioarchaeological, and ethnographic data. It offers a compelling and methodologically innovative approach using the moral economy, taskscapes, and embodiment as interpretative frames. Reconstructing the lived experience of ancient farmers, the book defines the physical,... Read more

1 The Farmer’s Experience; 2 Farming from the Ground Up: Taskscapes and Lived Experience; 3 Between Sweat and Hunger: Fables and the Moral Economy of Agrarian Life; 4 Sensorial Embodiment: Women and Agrarian Labour; 5 The Body at Work: Labour across Rural Communities; 6 Conclusion: Reclaiming the Farmer’s Experience

Biography

Dr Maeve McHugh, University of Birmingham, is a classical archaeologist specialising in the reconstruction of rural communities through archaeological, historical, literary, and ethnographic sources. Her research focuses on the lived experiences of non-elite and marginalised groups in the ancient world, with a particular interest in embodiment, labour, and rural life.