Wind, water, work

Lucas offers the most thorough evidence-based account yet of how grain was ground in antiquity and the Middle Ages. Using recent archaeological finds alongside written sources, he traces how handmills, animal-powered mills, watermills and windmills emerged and changed, from the first millennium BCE up to around 1500. The volume looks at the wide range of purposes mills served across Rome, China, the Islamic world and Europe, and at the many mill designs in use. Regional case studies explore what milling meant for society and the economy.

The book also takes on several debates in the field. It asks whether Late Antiquity was marked by technological stagnation, whether waterpower brought about an "industrial revolution" in the European Middle Ages, and how modern work on the social shaping of technology can help in understanding pre-modern machines.