Agricultural Labour and Lived Experience in Ancient Greece: Sweat and Hunger

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, conceptual, and ideological contours of the farmer’s world. It highlights the complex, embedded, and entangled nature of Greek agrarian life and draws on a wide range of interdisciplinary evidence to create a cultural history of rural labour. By moving beyond economic abstractions, the study reframes agricultural labour as a meaningful social and bodily practice, central to identity, community, and survival.

The book will be of particular interest to researchers and students of ancient history, archaeology, gender studies, and rural studies. It also appeals to readers interested in labour, embodiment, the moral economy, and reconstructing antiquity through everyday experience.

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.