In the yellow fields women were winnowing while children bundled and stacked the sheaves of maize.

BBC: Following the Silk Road to the end of China

Intellectual Ventures, as well as generating its own ideas, buys sheaves of patents from others.

ECONOMIST: Crazy-talking boffins

And despite sheaves of equal-pay legislation, women get paid less than men for comparable work.

ECONOMIST: Closing the gap

By scanning files into a computer, he was able to get rid of sheaves of paper going back 40 years.

FORBES: How To Be A Pack Rat

The Vikings tossed logs, the Scots threw sheaves of straw, the ancestors of the Inuit are rumored to have carried walruses around.

NEWYORKER: The Strongest Man in the World

If his dream was to live in the woods, with a fireplace and a typewriter and sheaves of notes hooked on the wall, almost like a deaf-mute in his dealings with the world, that was his affair.

ECONOMIST: J.D. Salinger