In this last episode of setup, we explore what daily life looked like for the farmers who made up most of the population of the khaganate, considering everything from their homes to their meals, crafts, and habits.

Trancript

Hello and welcome to A history of Romania.

Season 2, Episode 4: Village life

Last episode, we looked at the subject peoples under Avar dominion, and the episode before that, we explored the Avar ruling class and its political system. We’ll talk plenty about khagans, kings, and kaisars over the course of our narrative, so today, in the last episode of setup before we begin the story of season two, I want to take a look at the common people.

The common people are the ones who provided the flour that fed marching soldiers, the ones who forged the swords that clashed in battle, and the ones who drove the pack animals carrying supplies – without any of which no general could have won a victory. And it’s these same people who unloaded ships, laid brick on mortar, and hammered nails – without which the monarchs of the age would have no splendid palaces.

Our sources often gloss over them because there’s no glamour in ploughing a field or driving a donkey. If you’re a scribe at the imperial court, you’ll of course focus on crowns and battles, on great exploits performed by striking leaders – especially if they’re the ones paying you. In these texts, the common people are often reduced to a name on a map, a source of tribute, a target for raiding, or simply a displaced mass.

But I don’t want us to lose sight of their humanity. In the future, when we’ll talk about people in the countryside, I want us to have more than just a concept in mind; I want us to have an image of the people who lived in those villages. In the khaganate itself, everyone besides the Avars and Bulgars lived in agrarian communities; and though their lives weren’t recorded, they are worth remembering. So, let’s explore what a typical farming village looked like north of the Danube at the beginning of the 7^th century.

Villages in the Carpathian region often placed themselves near rivers or other water sources. They varied in size from about twenty to sixty households, which were sometimes grouped in batches of three or four buildings, as extended families settled near each other. These households consisted of huts with a sunken floor, a dwelling native to the Carpathian Mountains which is called bordei in Romanian.

By building part of the structure below the surface, labourers could use the excavated earth to erect walls, which they then reinforced with wattle and logs. This sunken style also made it easier to access the roof, which was made of logs or, in some cases, reeds and straw covered with rocks. Finally, these dugout homes were better protected from extreme weather and were easier to heat during harsh winters compared to surface dwellings.

Bordei were rectangular in shape, typically about four meters long, three meters wide, and up to a meter deep, offering just enough space for a nuclear family to eat and sleep. The entrance was usually located towards the East to admit as much light as possible, and on the opposite side lay the hearth, which was made of clay or rocks. The hearthfire was the center of family life, where meals were cooked, stories were told, and people fell asleep next to its warm embrace.

There were of course also wooden buildings built entirely above the surface – a few have even been found to have had a second floor – but such structures are much rarer because they required more time and resources to erect.

Regardless of their type of dwelling, villagers lived right next to the fields which they cultivated, because their main occupation was farming, and specifically farming cereals. You see, root vegetables like turnips and parsnips contain too much water to be stored for a long time, while legumes like lentils and chickpeas produce relatively small harvests. On the other hand, cereals like millet, barley, rye, and wheat mature quickly – between four to five months – and produce large yields which can be stored for years in dry conditions. Accordingly, while farmers did grow vegetables and legumes, most of their fields were dedicated to cereals.

The process of growing them began with clearing a field of its natural vegetation, with the easiest way to do so being to cut down trees and burn the remains. Next, farmers uprooted weeds and broke up compacted soil to prepare the field for seeding. A hoe could do the job, but a plough did it much better.

Poorer communities made ploughs out of wood and pulled them using their own muscles, but whenever resources were available, farmers forged iron ploughs and yoked animals to pull them. The two most common working animals were cattle and horses. Horses can work about twice as many hours in a day and also live almost twice as long as cattle. But cattle need substantially less food, and since most communities didn’t have much to spare, cattle were the leading draft animal in the region.

Even one animal made a huge difference in the field. By one estimation, a single farmer working with a hoe would need at least eight days to prepare a hectare of land for planting; in contrast, working with an ox-drawn wooden plough would give the same result in less than three days.

In fact, farmers needed to plough a field twice – the second time at a right angle from the original direction – to properly break up the earth. They then passed with a harrow, which is basically a wooden frame with teeth, to remove any large clods and weeds left behind, and to smooth the surface. Only then was the field ready to be planted, and farmers walked on this loose, well-aerated earth to scatter seeds by hand, which nestled in the soil and soon germinated.

This period of ploughing and seeding was done in the spring and was extremely tiresome, since it required several weeks of work from sunrise till sunset to complete all the necessary steps. But it was critical to start and end in due time, because even a week’s delay in planting could cause drastically smaller yields a few months later at harvesttime.

As the weather warmed and their crops grew, farmers often fertilized their fields. Fertilization was crucial because families cultivated the same land year after year. A piece of land could typically grow food for three to five years until its nutrients were depleted and the earth became exhausted. Afterwards, farmers would have to relocate to allow the land to recover for several years – sometimes more than a decade. Practically, this meant that the whole village would take all their possessions and migrate to a new location where the land was fertile. Indeed, agricultural communities in the region followed a rhythm of regular migrations from one spot to another, and back again. When farmers left, fields would naturally become overgrown and sprout vegetation, and when they returned, they would again have to slash and burn the area. The resulting ash would serve as good fertilizer, but farmers obviously wanted to add more to be able to cultivate a field as long as possible before having to relocate.

And so, farmers produced fertilizers of their own. They would gather urine and feces from their animals – along with some of their own – mix them with weeds, straw, stalks, leaves, and chaff, and let the mixture ferment. After a few weeks, this fertilizer would be ready for use, and farmers transported it in pails or carts to spread it over their fields. As you can imagine, this was hard and unappealing work, but it did help replenish the soil’s minerals and nutrients.

A less smelly way to increase yields was to vary the crops which were grown. Long experience had taught farmers the perils of monoculture, which exhausts the soil faster and makes it vulnerable to pests which thrive on the same plant. So, villagers alternated grain crops with leguminous ones, commonly planting peas, lentils, and beans after wheat, barley, oats, and rye; this rotation allowed the leguminous crops to fix nitrogen in the soil, which is the most important factor for grain size. Additionally, this biodiverse planting method combatted erosion and reduced the likelihood of total harvest failure from extreme weather or persistent pests.

After four to five months, cereals grew ripe, and it was time for the autumn harvest. Harvesting was the most tiring and time-consuming task of the year, taking three to four times longer than ploughing in the spring, as grain had to be carefully cut and collected. Everyone in the family got to work; men and women grabbed their sickles, and children – between four to six per family on average – helped with the smaller tasks as everyone put in as many arduous hours as necessary. Rainfall and mud could make matters miserable, but farmers couldn’t stop, because leaving the harvest in the field would lead ears of grain to overripen and shatter.

The autumn period was especially intense because, after collecting the harvest, families often did a second ploughing to plant winter crops like onions, which laid dormant during the cold months and ripened in the spring.

Once the cereal was cut, the grain had to be separated from the plant, a process known as threshing. Usually, farmers spread the cut plants on the ground and let draft animals tread over them, though they could also beat the plants with wooden flails. Either way, the end result was precious seeds, which were dried and stored in ceramic jars.

Properly protecting these seeds against fungi, insects, and rodents was crucial, because farmers had to have enough not only to last the winter, but also to seed next year’s fields. Indeed, farmers set aside as much as one-third or even one-half of every harvest for planting next year, because yields were sometimes low, and seeding by hand required a lot of grain. If farmers didn’t have enough for next year’s planting, famine was a certainty.

But if all went well, by the start of winter, families would have plenty of stored seeds to last for months on end. When they needed to eat, they’d mill them into flour using mortar and pestles or hollowed rubbing stones worked from a kneeling position. Milling was tedious work; it would take about half an hour to ground the flour needed for a person’s daily bread.

Indeed, bread was the main staple of agrarian communities in the region, making up at least half of their diet. Besides bread, people ate turnips, carrots, onions, radishes, parsnips, peas, beans, lentils, and cabbage in the form of soups and stews. Some variety came in the form of seasonally available fruits and vegetables; the region was suitable for apples, pears, plums, peaches, cherries, and grapes, as well as cucumbers and pumpkins. And to add flavour to their meals, people used garlic, hops, parsley, and vetch.

Meat was a luxury because it took a lot of food, time, and care to raise an animal, and killing one was no small decision. Villagers usually killed a part of their herds at the onset of winter because they didn’t have enough fodder to feed all of them through the cold months. These unfortunates were then butchered and their meat was smoked and salted to last as long as possible.

But mostly, villagers preferred live animals, not only because they could pull ploughs and produce fertilizer, but also because they were an important food source while alive; cows, goats, and sheep provided milk while chicken supplied eggs. These communities didn’t have the luxury of ignoring any food source, since droughts, floods, and pests regularly devastated crops. Most farmers experienced several famines during their lifetimes, and malnutrition and hunger were common, often leading to numerous infant deaths. In such harsh times, people ate bark and grasses, while others left their villages in search of food.

And so, keeping livestock alive was crucial to a community’s survival. Based on archeological evidence, cows and bulls were the most numerous animals in the Carpathian region, followed by sheep and goats, then pigs, birds, and, finally, horses.

People also hunted wild animals like boars, deer, hares, and aurochs, though they were only a small part of the food supply; archeological remains show that villagers ate twenty times as many domesticated animals as wild ones. To further diversify their food sources, villagers also regularly fished in their local river and foraged for mushrooms, berries, nuts, and roots in nearby forests.

The cold winter months brought a slower pace of life since farmers couldn’t work on their fields. But that doesn’t mean they were idle. One major task performed during the winter was weaving clothes.

A major source of fiber was wool, which came from shearing sheep around midsummer. Another was from flax and hemp plants grown alongside cereal crops. Whether the fibers came from plant or animal sources, they needed to be turned into yarn before they could be used, and this was done using a spindle. A spindle is basically a wooden stick with a hook at the top and a weight at the bottom; a worker would hook a bundle of fibers at the top, spin the spindle, and let the weight at the bottom pull the fibers downwards. In this way, the fibers would stretch, twist, and tighten into yarn, which could then be used in sewing, crocheting, knitting, weaving, embroidery, and ropemaking.

This process was mainly performed by women, and as you can imagine, it took a long time to produce a workable quantity of yarn, which is why it was usually done during the winter months when people were mostly confined inside.

Another domestic craft performed by women was pottery. About a fifth of ceramics found in the archeological record were made by hand and at home for everyday uses like jars and fishing hooks. But these pieces were only meant to make up for what professional artisans couldn’t supply. Indeed, most communities had potters who specialized in the craft and had their own workshops. Nearly four fifths of all pottery found in settlements of the region were made using the potter’s wheel, and many were stamped with designs and symbols showcasing each artisan’s style.

For all these domestic tasks – craftwork, cooking, preserving food, and keeping warm – people needed fire. The primary source of fuel for it was wood, which was air-dried for several months to remove as much moisture as possible. Some estimates note that a single person needed about a kilogram of wood per day for cooking and heating; in areas with sparser forests, gathering so much wood could lead to deforestation, since seedlings didn’t have enough time to grow and replace the trees that were felled.

To make the available wood last as long as possible, women and children made daily foraging trips to gather fallen branches, bark, and dry grasses, in addition to collecting crop residues like straws, stalks, vines, roots, and twigs. Every bit of combustible biomass was gathered for household use; even dung was sometimes combined with straw and molded into patties which were sun-dried before being burned, though sheep dung was avoided because it gave off acrid smoke.

The best fuel available to these communities was charcoal, which is nearly pure carbon. Charcoal provides about twice as much energy as wood and is almost smokeless, meaning your hut wouldn’t fill with smoke when cooking dinner. But charcoal was expensive to produce; it was made from wood, and required several steps.

First, workers stacked logs in a large conical pile with an empty space in the middle; they then sealed this stack with a layer of leaves, grass, moss, and earth; and once this vegetation cover was in place, they ignited a fire at the center of the pile. The empty space in the middle gave the fire just enough air to burn, but the thick vegetation cover prevented any more air from getting in. And so, the central fire didn’t engulf the entire woodpile, but instead heated it up. The idea is that the logs within the pile became so hot that all the water and volatile components inside of them evaporated, and what was left behind was the wood’s pure carbon structure.

Some of the gases which were released were combustible, and if they had nowhere to go, they could ignite and explode the entire stack. To prevent this, experienced charcoal burners had to pierce holes in the vegetation cover to let gases escape, but had to be careful not to pierce too many holes because that would bring in air and enflame all the logs. Depending on the size of the pile – which was often taller than a person – it usually took about a week for all the gases in the wood to escape.

Once the charring was complete, the charcoal burner plugged all the draft holes to quickly extinguish the fire. The vegetation cover was then opened and the charcoal raked and spread out to cool. It took four kilograms of wood to produce one kilogram of charcoal. Since it was so expensive to create, charcoal was only used for important crafts, the most crucial of which was that of the blacksmith.

Indeed, every sizeable settlement had a blacksmith, because iron was needed for nearly every tool the community used, from knives to sickles and ploughs. Without a blacksmith to forge and repair tools, the whole village stood still; and without iron, the blacksmith couldn’t work.

Villagers sourced iron from visible surface deposits or from the edges of bogs where iron-bearing groundwater surfaced. Every rural community was located near at least one such reliable source of ore, however small it may have been. These deposits were relatively easy to spot because of their distinctive reddish colour, which is the result of iron binding with oxygen.

Once extracted, this ore was mixed with charcoal in a furnace specifically designed to smelt iron. These furnaces, called bloomeries, were so small that there wasn’t enough air for the charcoal to completely combust. Instead, as the charcoal burned, it grabbed oxygen that was bound to iron in the ore. In this way, the charcoal transformed into carbon dioxide gas and escaped the bloomery, while the iron atoms in the ore were freed from their oxygen pairs and flowed to the bottom of the furnace.

Of course, the ore contained plenty of other solids as well, and impurities also fell to the bottom of the bloomery in a molten pool known as slag. To separate the slag from the iron, the smith reheated this mixed mass and hammered at it on an anvil to chip away the slag, fuse iron particles together, compress voids, and homogenize the piece. This arduous process produced wrought iron – which is the old expression for “worked iron” – with much fewer impurities, typically only a few percent. It is this wrought iron that was the main material for all of the community’s tools.

As you can see, even forging a simple hoe was no easy feat. Villagers on their foraging trips needed to extract small bits of iron ore and bring them together to have a workable quantity; a charcoal burner needed to work for days on end in a nearby forest, and be supplied with a good number of logs from woodcutters; and a blacksmith needed to operate a bloomery constantly to smelt iron, forge new tools, and repair existing ones. If any of these individuals were removed from the chain, the community wouldn’t be able to plough their fields or bring in their harvests. Each village was an interconnected web of various expertises and reciprocal relationships.

Though these villages were self-sufficient, that doesn’t mean they didn’t trade with one another. One village might have a beekeeper while another might have an experienced hunter; and so, honey and wax from one community could be traded for fur and leather from another. Similarly, artisans with special skills could create and trade luxury items, such as bone combs, antler knife handles, copper earrings, and lead pendants – all of which have been found in the archeological record.

Proximity was key in such trading relationships, because it was difficult to transport goods overland, especially on dirt tracks that could quickly get muddy. And the farther away you travelled from your village, the less familiar you were with your surroundings, making you especially vulnerable to wild animals and bandits.

So these village communities mostly traded close to home, and in doing so, they didn’t use coinage; they instead bartered. This system of exchange was less exact than using coins, but it worked well for local contexts where extended families were sometimes scattered in neighbouring settlements. Indeed, bartering relied on a social network which discouraged greed and miserliness and promoted goodwill while remembering past good deeds. In the Carpathian Basin, archeologists have noticed some groups of fifteen to thirty villages clustered closer together, which may be a reflection of closer economic and social ties between them.

Clearly, the rural communities of the khaganate weren’t isolated from one another, but instead established networks to get everything they needed. Though our historical sources unfortunately don’t talk about them in any detail, the glimpses that we do have tell of a resourceful and skillful web of communities. A village was much more than a simple source of tribute, as the Avars might’ve seen it. A village was home to hardy farmers, diligent shepherds, canny hunters, meticulous foragers, perceptive fishers, creative potters, talented weavers, vigilant charcoal burners, deft blacksmiths, clever builders, and inventive jewelers. It was a whole world onto itself.

And with that portrait, we’ve completed the setup for season two; we’ve looked at the khaganate from its highest echelons to its most earthy communities, and we now have all the context we need to dive into the story. So join me in two weeks as we start the narrative and close the door on Late Antiquity to enter the Medieval Age.