Les hommes, la terre et la dette en Grèce. c. 1400 - c. 500 a.C. (2 Volumes)

The long-neglected issues of land distribution and exploitation had to be placed again at the heart of the history of early Greece, from the great period of Mycenaean palaces to the formation of City-States. This book presents an analysis of land tenure systems based on all available sources, from Mycenaean texts to traditions on Archaic Greece and rural archaeology. Its aim is to demonstrate the importance of the palatial period in the economic and social history of Greece, beyond schematic debates on continuity or discontinuity. Analysing land tenure and also exchanges, monetary forms, debt relations, the rent, the mobilization of free and unfree labour leads to a new understanding of the economic and social history of these centuries. Economic processes played a central role in the formation of City-States. This is how Greek City-States will find their place in the wider Mediterranean context again, beyond the idea of a Greek miracle or exception.