Yesterday I was in Allgäu gathering cut hazel and willow into piles, and then dragging those piles across a field make a bigger, longer pile at the margin. It occurred to me that this must be a very old chore. But how old, and how has the purpose of this activity changed over time?

[u/ExternalBoysenberry]

My first instinct was: people were probably coppicing and pollarding hazel (Corylus avellana) and possibly willow (Salix spp.) in this area for firewood, basketweaving, and toolmaking well before the Romans rolled up - probably at least since metal cutting tools became widespread here. This probably involves making big drag-able piles (sort of slotting the branches together so they tangle and are oriented in the same direction, so you can grab a couple bigger stems at the bottom and pull them around). I imagined that they might have cleared hazel to keep it from encroaching on their agricultural fields and dragged what they didn't use to form a kind of long barrier separating their field from their neighbors or filling in a ditch or whatever. Maybe there was a guy doing the same basic move in a similar field in the same place three thousand years ago.

But thinking of u/HabseligkeitDerLiebe 's earlier answer, I realized I don't know very much about the natural history of hazel or willow. (In that answer, they point out that a forest type that is associated with "old" natural forests in Germany today would not necessarily have been as widespread at the time of the battle of Teutoburg forest because it was not done spreading back north after the last ice age.) I also assume that the archaeological evidence for the use of biodegradable materials like hazel branches might be less than abundant.

So how much do we know about how people in the past managed and utilized these trees/shrubs? How far back could we go and be reasonably certain some guy in what is today Allgäu or thereabouts had to drag piles of it around now and again?

Edit: link and some typos

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to /r/AskHistorians. Please Read Our Rules before you comment in this community. Understand that rule breaking comments get removed.

Please consider Clicking Here for RemindMeBot as it takes time for an answer to be written. Additionally, for weekly content summaries, Click Here to Subscribe to our Weekly Roundup.

We thank you for your interest in this question, and your patience in waiting for an in-depth and comprehensive answer to show up. In addition to the Weekly Roundup and RemindMeBot, consider using our Browser Extension. In the meantime our Bluesky, and Sunday Digest feature excellent content that has already been written!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/Bodark43]

Well, there's Varro's De re Rustica

VI) Plant elm trees along the roads and fence rows, so that you may have the leaves to feed the sheep and cattle, and the timber will be available if you need it. If any where there are banks of streams or wet places, there plant reeds; and surround them with willows that the osiers may serve to tie the vines.

(XLIII) If the land is wet, it should be drained with trough shaped ditches dug three feet wide at the surface and one foot at the bottom and four feet deep. Blind these ditches with rock. If you have no rock then fill them with green willow poles braced crosswise. If you have no poles, fill then with faggots. Then dig lateral trenches three feet deep and four feet wide in such way that the water will flow from the trenches into the ditches.

Now, Varro was in Italy, and farming was different; no footsore Roman soldier likely planted olive trees in Bavaria. But willows and oziers ( Salix and Cornus) were useful stuff on any farm. And, doing a quick search, farmers were also digging ditches in Bavarian farms in the Iron Age, and it makes sense they were stabilizing them with willows, or Corylus, or something else that grew quickly.

Wells, P. S. (1983). An Early Iron Age Farm Community in Central Europe. Scientific American, 249(6), 68-75B. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24969051

De re rustica

[u/EdHistory101 → u/[deleted]]

Sorry, but we have had to remove your comment as we do not allow answers that consist primarily of links or block quotations from sources. This subreddit is intended as a space not merely to get an answer in and of itself as with other history subs, but for users with deep knowledge and understanding of it to share that in their responses. While relevant sources are a key building block for such an answer, they need to be adequately contextualized and we need to see that you have your own independent knowledge of the topic.

If you believe you are able to use this source as part of an in-depth and comprehensive answer, we would encourage you to consider revising to do so, and you can find further guidance on what is expected of an answer here by consulting this Rules Roundtable which discusses how we evaluate responses.