Threshing-board

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This article is the current Spanish Translation of the Week. Please help in translating this page if you can. The original article was at es:Trillo (agricultura) Translation work is at Threshing-board/Translation.

A threshing-board (Spanish: trillo) is a wooden implement used in agriculture for the threshing process, which involves separating grain from the stalks and husks of cereal plants. It was frequently used in traditional Spanish agriculture, where the more common flail was unusual, as well as throughout the Mediterranean Sea area, before the advent of the combine harvester.^[1]

Contents 1 Physical description 2 Traditional uses 3 See also 4 Notes

[edit] Physical description

Threshing-boards are commonly made of wood with a close to rectangular shape and a turned up front portion, reminiscent of a common sled's profile. An early 19th century source describes the threshing board as being "three on four feet of wide and about six feet long, frequently varying in these dimensions".^[2] Their bottom (ground facing) sides have large numbers of lithic flakes of flint inlaid. These flakes function to abrade and cut cereal plants when they slide over the threshing floor. In this way, the grain is separated from the rest of the plant.

[edit] Traditional uses

Traditionally a threshing-board would be dragged by mules or oxen over piles of grain. When moving in circles, the blades cut the cereals, separating the seed without damaging it. Later, the resultant grain would be cleaned and processed.

Harvesting grain to take to the threshing floor

Traditional use of a threshing-board in the Near East

Sweeping the threshing floor to gather the ground cereals

Cleaning the ground cereal with a specialized implement

Theshing-boards are still used in this way in some rural regions of Europe where advanced agricultural processes are not available. Sometimes one is used ceremonially in local customs, or to reenact old practices for entertainment purposes.^[3]

[edit] See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Trillo - threshing-board

• Gacería
• Washboard

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Sound and Science: an approach to the ethnoarchaeology of threshing cereals and pulses, by Patricia C. Anderson
2. ^ Boutelou, Claudio: "Sobre un trillo de nueva invención", en Semanario de agricultura y artes, XIX.- Madrid (1806), pp. 50. (translated from Spanish)
3. ^ La trilla tradicional en Castroviejo, Rioja Alta (in Spanish)