mulsA - museo di storia dell'agricoltura - ETS
Fondato a Milano nel 1971
THE GRAPEVINE AND WINE
This section traces the millennia-long history of viticulture and winemaking in their historical, religious and cultural aspects. The full domestication of the vine dates to the 4th millennium BC in the Levant and the southern Caucasus. The production of wine from grapes, however, precedes the domestication of the vine by at least two millennia and is thought to have originated in the southern Caucasus, where the fermentation of grapes harvested from wild grapevines had already assumed important productive and cultural significance. From these regions, the culture of the vine and wine spread to Anatolia, Mesopotamia, the Levant, Egypt, and the Mediterranean basin.
The first panel recalls the significance and earliest evidence of alcoholic beverage production, based on archaeological and ethnographic data. A large map of the Old World illustrates the chronology of vine domestication and the spread of viticulture. Further displays present the cultivation and winemaking techniques of the earliest civilisations, the role of wine in religion and society, and the earliest evidence of viticulture and wine consumption in Lombardy.
One panel documents vine cultivation and winemaking in Lombardy at the beginning of the 20th century, and another depicts several contemporary vineyard landscapes in Lombardy. Beneath the panels are placed numerous objects including small barrels, vats, large and small brente, brente adapted into tanks with pumps for pesticide treatments, bottling and corking devices, and other equipment.
​
A view of the exhibition space dedicated to “The Grapevine and Wine”: origins and diffusion of viticulture
AMERICAN PRE-COLUMBIAN AGRICULTURE
​In pre-Columbian America, populations with highly diverse economies coexisted. Alongside societies based on intensive agriculture, such as the urban empires of the Aztecs and the Incas, there were communities—especially in the Amazon and North America—that practiced shifting cultivation, complementing it with hunting and the gathering of wild plants and animals. A wide variety of plant species were domesticated, each associated with specific centres of domestication: Central America – maize, summer squash, beans, chili peppers; Northern South America – sweet potato, cacao; Andean region – potato, tomato, bean, tobacco; Amazon region – peanut, pineapple, manioc, winter squash; Southwestern North America – sunflower. Domesticated animal species were far fewer: the turkey in Central America, the muscovy duck in northern South America, and in the Andean region the llama, alpaca, and guinea pig.
The exhibition space features two significant iconographic reproductions documenting pre-Columbian agricultural practices in the Andean and North American civilizations. These include the Monthly Plates by Poma de Ayala (1534–1615), illustrating the cultivation cycles of maize and potatoes among the Inca, and a watercolor by John White (1539–1593) depicting the agricultural activities of the Algonquian peoples of North America. A large display case presents several varieties of maize ears—the symbolic plant of American agriculture—shown alongside those of teosinte, its wild ancestor. Another case exhibits ceramic vessels from Peru shaped like sweet potato tubers, maize ears, squash fruits, and the heads of llamas and muscovy ducks. A taxidermied turkey highlights the importance of this gallinaceous bird native to North America; behind it, a large panel depicts a llama beside the impressive agricultural terraces of an Inca archaeological site in Peru. A monitor displays a slideshow dedicated to the main centers of domestication and to the plant and animal species domesticated across the American continent. In a large drawer, visitors can view a collection of American beans together with samples of raw llama and alpaca wool, compared with the coarser wool of sheep.
​
Overview of the exhibition area dedicated to “Pre-Columbian American Agriculture”
LAND SURVEYING AND TECHNICAL DRAWING
​
Located on the floor of the Main Courtyard and accessible from the Sala del Presidio, this exhibition space houses an original collection of technical drawing instruments used between the 18th and 20th centuries, donated to the Museum by Professor Edoardo Rovida. This collection documents one of the foundations of agricultural development: technical drawing, essential to the design of machinery, livestock housing, storehouses, irrigation works, cadastral maps, and more.
Complementing this is a collection of instruments for land surveying, an indispensable support for that “certainty of boundaries” without which agricultural development could never be achieved. The advent of agriculture in the Po Valley over 6,000 years ago brought substantial changes to the landscape, first through deforestation and subsequently through the use of the plough—introduced more than six millennia ago—which imposed the rectangular form of fields.
In Roman times, landscape modification became systematic with the spread of centuriation, the grid-based division of land, the traces of which remain visible today in many flat areas of Italy, as well as in other European and North African countries once under Roman rule. In Britain, however, Roman dominion did not last long enough to consolidate the practice, and the boundaries of fields often remain those defined in pre-Roman times, especially during the Iron Age.
The centuriation grids were laid out by land surveyors using the groma, a topographic instrument, a full-scale reproduction of which is displayed here. Among other instruments on display are: the tavoletta pretoriana, used in the 18th century for the cadastral survey commissioned by Empress Maria Theresa; the squadro agrimensorio, an optical instrument and the modern analogue of the Roman groma; and a theodolite, an optical instrument with a telescope for measuring azimuthal (horizontal plane) and zenithal (vertical plane) angles.
Also noteworthy is a caliper used for measuring the diameter of tree trunks in forest inventories
​
View of the exhibition space dedicated to “Land Surveying and Technical Drawing”
