This introduction begins by explaining the role of consumers and consumption in both pre-industrial and modern economies, with particular emphasis on the decisive role of the peasantry. The book is framed within a paradigm shift that recognises medieval peasants as key agents of social and economic change. This chapter provides a state-of-the-art review of the connection between consumption, material culture, and living standards in scholarship, identifying gaps and unanswered questions that this book seeks to address. It also highlights the significance of food-related possessions in the material culture of ordinary people, the region under analysis (the Kingdom of Valencia), and the sources under examination (probate inventories, public auction records, and others). The introduction concludes with a general outline of the book’s four parts and presents the central argument: that peasant decision-making as consumers during the later Middle Ages had a positive impact on the overall economic development of a leading Mediterranean polity – thus revealing the power of peasant consumers.

The purpose of this chapter is to reconstruct trends in the price of food-related objects. This chapter is divided into three sections. The first section explains the available sources for studying the value of everyday objects and reveals how a sample of prices was built for this purpose. The next section explores differences in prices over the kingdom of Valencia, showing a remarkable trans-regional uniformity. This phenomenon will be the basis for the last section, in which price trends are reconstructed at the level of the realm.