Instead, since written records for villages barely exist, and since I devoted too little of my time in the field to reconstructing in detail the history of the two villages, I must rely on argument based on the material available to me. In the first situation, land is freely available. Any household is able to take over land so long as it has the manpower and the draught animals to work it. Land not worked reverts to pasture. In the second situation, all cultivable land that can be spared from the village pasture is owned and cultivated.
Households can only increase their holdings by taking land from other households.
Wherever the village is small in relation to the territory available, land for cultivation is freely available. Plainly such a situation existed in most, if not all, villages in the area in the recent past, and indeed in many other parts of Anatolia. Other evidence supports this view.