Tracking gristmills in Portugal: retrospection and reflexivity on place, technology, and change

Abstract

This article discusses changes in Portuguese gristmills driven by wind and water in the context of a personal retrospection on a field project carried out four decades earlier. Into the mid-twentieth century, windmills and two kinds of watermills were still important rural facilities to grind wheat, rye, and maize into flour. By the 1970s, technological change in Portugal had much reduced the number of those still operating; by 2011 most of those mills had ceased. The major exception is the persistence of watermills in the northwestern part of the country where maize cultivation, fondness for maize bread, powerful streams, hamlet settlement, and a conservative frugality converges to keep some mills still working. Nevertheless, they too, can be expected to disappear in the years ahead. Function is one thing; form is another. The Portuguese landscape remains rich in these structures and broadly held sentiment favors their preservation. Reflecting on a past project stimulated thinking about the importance of place in formulating a geographical topic, research as a cultural experience, constraints of fieldwork in the life span of scholars, and the value of critical self-assessment.

Keywords:

• Portugal
• reflexivity
• retrospection
• technological change
• water mills
• windmills

Acknowledgements

Mary Killgore Gade accompanied the author in 1971, made the maps, and read the text, but still chose not to co-author this article. Two reviewers and the journal editor made useful suggestions that improved the manuscript.

Notes

1. Eastern North America once had thousands of horizontal mills that turned in a clockwise direction. But in the old Spanish-American region of New Mexico studied by Gritzner (1974), gristmills constructed of logs had horizontal wheels that turned counter-clockwise and functioned well into the twentieth century. That difference in wheel direction reflected the source of the technology: In Eastern North America from the British Isles and in New Mexico from Spain via Mexico.

2. An argument advanced in Switzerland favored keeping some watermills in working order as a way of maintaining a skill unconnected to the electricity grid. In its program of financial incentives, the Swiss government recognized that artisan knowledge is potentially valuable in the event of unforeseen disruption in energy distribution (Pelet et al. 1989).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel W. Gade

Daniel W. Gade is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geography at the University of Vermont, 200 Old Mill Building, 94 University Place, Burlington, VT 05405 USA