The principle aim of the research is to discover how Mediterranean peasants make a living, since relatively little is known of the basis of peasant existence: agriculture. Fieldwork was concentrated in a Greek peasant community with a largely unmechanised economy because the study is part of a larger interdisciplinary programme of archaeological and historical research. The study concentrates on the description and analysis of the community\u27s adaptation to the exigencies of the environment. Environmental parameters include both the natural and human factors which affect peasant production. A major focus is therefore on technology in its widest sense: i.e. a flexible repertoire of tools, skills and knowledge for coping with these environmental factors. Technology thus provides the essential link between the environment and the study community. Introductory chapters describe the environmental, social, economic and historical backgrounds. A discussion of the repertoire of tools and their applications follows. The significance of the biological parameters of the major cultigens and domesticates, and the importance of soil-moisture maintenance are stressed. Succeeding chapters analyse a series of coping-mechanisms for surviving the expectable but not predictable hazards which periodically arise in the natural and human environments. Concluding chapters place the Methana data within the context of the wider field of economic anthropology. Finally, hierarchical models of hazard response are compared with the evidence of hazard-response strategies on Methana. A recurring theme is the importance of decisions made by farmers in ensuring both their daily livelihood and their survival under stress conditions. Decision-making related to the make-up of individual households\u27 labour-forces explains much of the variability observable in the application of the technological repertoire. Hazard-coping mechanisms are also shown to include a major decision-making element at both household and community levels. The final chapter speculates on the long-term maintenance of some of these decision-making processes
