Quiz
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What are they?
The slideshow below shows 14 artefacts from days gone by- some used in agriculture, some for other uses.
Can you guess what they were used for?
The answers are below
Answers:
1. A “zvarna”- a kind of sledge with sharp stones imbedded on the under side. The sledge was dragged by a mule around a threshing circle (“aloni”), weighed down by someone sitting or standing on it (see photo). This was one way of separating the grain from the chaff.
2. A finger protector for harvesting wheat used in conjunction with a sickle.. 3 fingers were placed in the holes and the hook gathered the wheat together before being slashed.
3. An “oka”. A brass weight, weighing just over 1 kg.
4. A “tsiggeli”- believe it or not, a bucket retriever! These are still used in villages that don’t have mains water. If the rope snaps while fetching water from your local well, a tsiggeli can be used to retrieve it.
5. Another way of breaking wheat husks. A bundle of wheat was placed on the serrated piece of wood and the handle lowered to break open the husks. Mid 19th century.
6. An “apostaktiras”- a distiller for making raki/ tsipouro. The distiller was placed over a cauldron of boiling grape pulp (the residue from wine production) and when cooled, the alcohol would drip out of the 2spouts. Historically, there have been numerous attempts to control the production of raki by the numerous different governments Greece has had since 1821, to both collect taxes and to regulate its’ consumption. At worse, the apostaktiras were confiscated and only released for a specific period once vines had been harvested in the autumn.
7. Diving boots. Made of leather and weighted with brass and lead. Used for walking on the sea bed, primarily to collect sponges.
8. A cigar rack. Bought from a Dutch company, this Athenian firm would clamp the freshly rolled cigars between the 2 pieces of wood until dry.
9. A book press. The pages were clamped in the wooden vice so they could be sewn together by hand.
10. A “distaff”, or rather 3 of them. These rods were used for spinning wool etc.
11. Game board for Merels, also called Nine Men’s Morris – possibly the oldest board game in the world. The earliest confirmed date is a board dated 1400BC found at Karna in Egypt and later examples have been found in a bronze age burial in Ireland, on Henry VIII’s ship the Mary Rose and a temple in Sri Lanka to mention a few. In Elizabethan England it was played out of doors on village greens with the board cut into the turf and Shakespeare refers to such a Nine men’s Morris board in A Midsummer Nights Dream. The Chinese are said to have played as early as 500BC, Ovid mentions the Romans playing the game in “Ars Amatoria” and in Canterbury and Norwich Cathedrals there are boards carved on pews by the monks. In Greece, examples were found in the ruins of Troy and on the Acropolis. (For rules and how to play the game an internet search with Google gives many sites). The example here is one of several scratched in marble at Charia, south of Areopolis. It cannot be dated but is well worn suggesting that it certainly isn’t recent.
12. A stool for cutting tobacco on. The lever on top rotates and was used as an arm rest- it swivels so as to suit a left or right handed worker. Again, mid 19th century.
13. The marble base of an olive press. After the olives have been crushed by revolving stones in a mill to extract the oil, the remaining pulp is sandwiched between circular mats and then squeezed in the press to extract any remaining oil. The oil drips into the circular groove and into a container via the gutter.
14. Old stone Beehives. It is not known how old they are but when Col. W.M. Leake was travelling through Mani in 1805, he noted similar hives. “The hives are made of four slates set up on the edges, with other pieces for the roofs and floors. In some of the stands there are eight or ten hives in a row, and two or three stories of hives, so that at a distance the structure looks like a wall built of very large stones.” W.M. Leake “Travels in the More” Vol1, page 281
