Kepeia: The Market Gardens of Classical Attica

Abstract

This thesis concerns market gardening in classical Attica (5th and 4th centuries BCE), investigating the socioeconomic and environmental dimensions of small-scale intensive cultivation. Blurring the boundary between city and countryside, gardens provided an important economic outlet to city dwellers and essential variety to urban diets, but Greek gardens have been little studied by historians or archaeologists. Neglecting them not only misses a key component of food production and distribution, but also overlooks a meaningful feature of the cultivated landscape. I will examine the literary and epigraphic evidence for market gardens, framing them in explicitly economic terms, before suggesting some archaeological approaches based on two case studies.