The Farming Year

For the Hittite kingdom of the Late Bronze Age, farming joined a sequence of tasks: preparing fields, sowing, harvesting, processing grain and tending animals. Household survival and the supply of temples and armies depended on completing this work. Central Anatolia had cold winters and seasonal rainfall, while the Syrian territories included different growing environments. At Hattusa, crop stores preserve direct evidence of what farmers produced and how the state gathered it.

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The seasonal cycle

Fields had to be worked and sown before crops could be cut, gathered and stored. Household plans also had to leave enough seed for the next sowing and fodder for animals. A successful harvest provided food over the interval until the next one, making storage and the condition of working animals part of the same cycle.

Research at Hattusa identifies hulled wheats and hulled barley. In hulled wheat, the edible grain remains enclosed in tough chaff after initial threshing. Weed ecology and crop analysis indicate relatively extensive cultivation, with less concentrated labour and manuring than in intensive garden-like production. These findings concern the grain gathered at the capital in the sixteenth century BCE.

Preparing fields and sowing

Hittite laws refer to ploughs, teams of oxen and the hiring of working animals. An ox team supplied the force to pull the plough through the soil, while someone guided the implement and controlled the animals. Households needed access to draft power at the moment field work was due, which made the loss or injury of an ox a serious economic matter.

Sowing could create disputes over who had worked a field and who had the right to its crop. One law addresses a case in which seed was sown on ground already sown by someone else. Its earlier penalty is described as severe; a later ruling substitutes animal and food compensation, while preserving the first sower’s claim to harvest the field. The provision treats planting not only as a physical task but also as an act that established claims to the coming crop.

Harvesting, processing, and storing grain

A legal tariff describes harvest labour in a sequence of binding sheaves, loading a cart, putting the crop into storage and clearing the threshing floor. A sheaf was a bundle of cut stalks, easier to gather and carry than loose stems. The threshing floor provided a working surface for separating the crop before the useful grain could be stored or prepared for food.

The collection also sets grain wages for seasonal work by men and women. Hiring allowed a household to add labour when a ripe crop needed prompt attention. Payment transferred a measured quantity of harvested produce to the worker, connecting the availability of help with the crop itself.

At Hattusa, an underground silo complex held grain on an institutional scale. The sixteenth-century stores combine crops grown under differing local conditions, consistent with collection from more than one producing community. Smaller household supplies served the interval between meals, sowing and harvest, while large stores supported the court and other dependants.

Animals and the timing of field work

Cattle, sheep, goats, horses, mules, donkeys, and pigs formed part of the Hittite livestock economy. Oxen supplied traction for ploughing, while other animals were valuable property that could be rented, lost, injured, or stolen. Hittite laws give detailed attention to disputes over animals, including rules about compensation and the return of straying livestock. Their provisions reveal how closely animal care and agricultural work were connected to ownership and responsibility.

Grazing had to be managed around cultivated land. The laws set penalties for sheep damaging a productive vineyard and address animals straying into fields. They also distinguish between damage to a vineyard bearing fruit and damage when it was empty. These cases show that the consequences of grazing depended on the state of the crop, and that herding required attention to boundaries as well as to the animals themselves.

A law concerning a burned livestock shelter required the person responsible to feed the cattle until spring and restore the building. Straw stored with animals supplied an additional resource after the grain harvest. Losing a shelter could therefore destroy both protection from winter weather and part of the feed needed to keep a working herd alive.

Labor, tools, and obligations

Household members worked alongside hired and dependent labour. Cult estates also required cultivators and herders: Mursili II’s prayers describe the loss of workers who maintained divine fields, bread supplies and herds. The working population connected food production with the services performed by temples.

Ploughs, sickles, carts and oxen represented investments in the next stage of work. The laws valued these goods and assigned responsibility for theft or damage. A stolen implement or unavailable draft animal could interfere with work that had to be done while soil or crops were ready.

Some landholders owed service or produce in return for holding land. Military demands drew workers away from fields and herds, while crop dues transferred part of a harvest to institutions. A household thus balanced its own food and seed needs with claims on both its time and produce.

For the wider setting, see Hittite daily life.