The main source of income, whether this was intended for domestic consumption, or for trading, was land. Stockbreeding was localized to particular mountainous regions, precisely due to their geographical position. Scholars of the Archaic period maintain that the economic reasons for the crises of the Archaic world -wherever and whenever these crises could be pinpointed and regardless of whether they were a result of social discontent or warfare- they were directly or indirectly associated with land. Furthermore, any economic claims that were presented and about which we are informed by the sources, focused on land.

Hesiod with his work Works and Days and Solon with any of his surviving poems, are the only available sources, contemporary with that particular period. They refer to the tension existing between poor peasants and powerful landowners-aristocrats. However, it should be stressed that Solon as well as Hesiod refer to different regions and belong to different periods, since approximately one century separates them. Hesiod informs us about the conditions in agriculture in a small rural region of Boeotia, Ascra (probably his native village), in the beginning of the 7th century BC (Hesiod, Works and Days 383-617). Solon's views, as these are preserved in the works of Aristotle and Plutarch, constitute a direct source on Athens in the beginning of the 6th century BC, before Pisistratus' tyranny prevailed (Aristotle, Athenaion Politeia 12, Plutarch, Life of Solon 13.1-3).

Problems between peasants and landowners, were a result of rich people's greed. They were the ones with the power everywhere and they tried to augment their property and increase the number of labourers that depended on them. The situation was aggravated due to unexploited tracts of land, unequal land distribution and the method of distributing the inheritance.