ABSTRACT
Before becoming embroiled in Siena’s military affairs early in the thirteenth century, Sant’Angelo in Colle probably functioned like a miniature version of a bustling market town, serving as a stopping off place for travellers and trades people, but essentially quietly engaged with its own curved ploughs and the seasonal fruits of its orchards and market gardens.1 The changing seasons regulated different agrarian activities from furrowing the earth for growing corn and creating pastures for sheep and cows, and from tending the vines and olives for the production of wine and oil, to the rooting out of acorns for the feeding of the pigs. once drawn under the Sienese yoke, the pace of life must have quickened with the influx of strangers from the city, the construction of more dwellings inside the walls and the establishment of new patterns of leasing and renting. Despite this, it seems that Sant’Angelo in Colle continued to depend in large part on age-old rhythms of agricultural life.
