Agriculture & Cities

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The interior of a great timber barn with opposed doors open, a plume of chaff caught in mid-air on the cross draught above a heap of threshed grain, and a trestle bench along the right wall carrying an iron-banded bushel measure, a bundle of notched tally sticks and an account roll weighted open at a ruled column

The Granary as an Institution

Storable surplus is not simply food left over. It is a claimable object, and the arguments about how it was measured, sealed, defended and lost are arguments about how states came to exist.

By Brecht Corbeel · August 9, 2026 · 19 min read

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