Man and Economy

Agriculture

Milking Scene

Josef Lechner

The popular culture of the pre- industrialera was predominantly agrarian. Right from its verybeginnings, ethnography regarded agriculture as anarea of special interest, less in terms of historical,social, and economic issues than in terms oftraditional lifestyles and work styles of farmers.

Despite or because of advancing mechani-zation and the dwindling of the farming population,old agricultural tools were looked at with increasingcuriosity. They became a symbol for the ideologicallyrevered work of farmers.

Only a more recent perspective has taughtus to look at tools as part of a certain economicsystem, and to recognize structural change in the waytools have changed. Accordingly, the conventionalwooden plough stands for the medieval agriculturalrevolution that introduced the three- field crop ro-tation system, whereas the grain dressing mill sym-bolizes the innovations of the agricultural reforms ofthe eighteenth century.

Buchberg near Bischofshofen, Salzburg, early 20th century