History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 282

confirm that all the Slavs including their Polabian branch were sedentary people and
their main mode of subsitence was agriculture. From the turn of the seventh century a
crop rotation in a two-field system, similar to one practised in the Western Europe,
became widespread. Evidence of a relatively advanced agriculture among medieval
Western Slavs comes from many historical accounts. Ibrahim ibn Jacub, a Jewish
merchant, who travelled through Piast's principality (modern Poland) and northern
Polabian lands in the middle of the tenth century, reported that the Slavs sowed twice
a year. This is confirmed by archaeological data from Tornow, near Calau in Lower
Lusatia, where rye and barley were sown in autumn and wheat and millet in the
spring. Also, an English missionary from Wessex, Saint Boniface, who worked in
central Germany in the eighth century, praised Baltic Slavs (most likely the Sorbs or
Obodrites) for their highly developed agriculture, trade and crafts in comparison with
the Eastern Germanic tribes of Saxons and Thuringians. By the seventh century
agriculture among all the Western Slavs was dominated by ploughing. Burning wild
vegetation and shifting the fields was probably practised only in marginal areas. Fields
were ploughed by wooden ards and pulled by yoked oxen. Medieval Slavic ards were
usualy made of hard oak wood. Many ards were reinforced with iron tip or coulter,
definitely from the eighth - nineth century. This is confirmed by the finds at Tornow,
and at Platkow, near Lebus.
Animal husbandry was an important part of Slavic economy, second only to
agriculture. The analysis of animal bones excavated from various early Slavic sites,
including those in modern eastern Germany, revealed that between 90 and 100
percent of animal remains were of domesticated species, such as pigs, cattle, horses,
goats, sheep, chicken and geese. Archaeological data from Wolin shows that pork
comprised over 60 percent and beef almost one third of all red meat consumed, while
sheep and goat meat contributed to only around 5 percent of the diet. It can be safely
assumed that for the rest of the Polabian Slavs meat consumption was close to that of
Wolin.
Prior to their subjugation by the Empire, many Polabian settlements grew into
adminstrative, manufacturing and trade centres. The strongholds like Lьbeck,
Schwerin, Ratzeburg, Demmin, Radogost, Ralswiek on Rьgen, Brandenburg,
Havelsberg, Kцpenick (today a suburb of Berlin), Gana, Bautzen, and Liubu a
developed into early mediaeval towns, as a result of local socio-political developments
and extensive contacts of various nature with the Empire.Still, they were not of great
size by modern standards.Based on the archaeological data, their average estimated
size was somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 inhabitants.That is smaller then
average towns in the Empire, but not significantly.Two towns, on the VeletianPomeranian border, Szczecin (GermanStettin) and Wolin, were exceptions as they
were relatively large, and both were involved in lucrative Baltic trade.They also
developed a peculiar form of government, a "merchant republic", in a similar way to
Novgorod in Russia.They were run by wealthy merchants and other prominent citizens
of the town. The memories of Wolin's greatness, sometimes exaggerated, were
recorded by Adam of Bremen:
" Jumne (Wolin), a most noble city, affords a very widely known trading centre for the
barbarians and Greeks wholived round about... It is truly the largest of all the cities of
Europe, and there live in it Slavs and many other peoples...Rich in the wares of all the
northern nations, that city lacks nothing that is either pleasingor rare".
With the exception of Wolin and Szczecin, and possibly the Obodrite Lьbeck, the
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