Markets for Land, Labor, and Capital

The first thing we did on 1/25/20 was go to see an archeological excavation site underneath someone’s house in Orvieto. We stepped inside and saw the ancient Etruscan caves, which date back to about 450 BC, and most of them in this site were used as garbage disposal areas. The holes were absolutely huge. After walking around a bit there we went into another room that had all of the artifacts that they had found in that site. Most of it was pottery, but there were also several animal bones.

Later that day we went on a tour of the more expansive part of the Etruscan cave system. We went in two separate caves, which were all man-made by the Etruscans, and there is evidence of them being used by people up until the mid-19th century. The first cave had a machine and different rocks that were used for crushing olives and making olive oil, while the second cave was mostly used for housing pigeons, which were a main source of food for the people of that time. It is evident that the Etruscans were very innovative people, as they found ways to avoid the toxic air that is present deep underground, which I thought was super intriguing.

Olive crushing machine in one of the caves

Our article is titled “Markets for Land, Labor, and Capital” and it was basically an economic history of those three things during the Middle Ages in North-central Italy and in the Low Countries. There have been land exchanges as early as the 8th century. Civil courts became important in regulating land transactions and keeping them all in a register. Leasing became a big part of the land market, as did sharecropping in some areas. Credit markets in the Low Countries and Italy became prominent before other regions in Europe. Some places in Europe sold land in exchange for labor. The wealthy people in both regions held the majority of the wealth, which I thought was interesting because for the most part it is still the same now.

Rural farmland outside of Orvieto