1st Edition

Peasant Agriculture in the Jerusalem Hills

Edited By Carol Palmer Copyright 2026
472 Pages 45 Color & 134 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Lucjan Turkowski’s first‑hand account of peasant life in 1940s British Mandate Palestine explores farming, food, language and craft production. He examines cultivated crops, the role of animals and the division of labour, highlighting its material culture in a vivid portrait of rural life. While preserving Turkowski’s original ethnographic and agricultural research, this book offers a rare... Read more

List of illustrations; Editor’s note; Note on terminology; Abbreviations and acronyms; Acknowledgements; Foreword by Leila Sansour; Part I The scholar in exile – 1. Lucjan Turkowski: life and work; 2. Lucjan’s Turkowski’s study of Palestinian peasantry; Part II Peasant agriculture in the Judaean hills – Preface;  3. Introduction; 4. Cultivation of field plants; 5. Cultivation of garden plants; 6. Fruit farming; 7. Animal management; 8. Supplementary provisions; 9. Food preservation and storage; 10. Food preparation and dishes; Annex 1. Summary of Lucjan Turkowski’s archival materials in Poznań; Annex 2. Publications consulted by Lucjan Turkowski; Annex 3. Lucjan Turkowski’s publications, unpublished texts and archival sources;  Annex 4. Books donated to the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań from the collection of Lucjan Turkowski;  Index.

Biography

Carol Palmer is an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London’s Institute of Archaeology and former Director of the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), a British International Research Institute (BIRI) funded by the British Academy. Her research combines interests in rural lifeways and ecology, ethnobotany, the anthropology of food and the transformation of landscapes in response to ecological, social and political change.