Tom Williamson. Shaping Medieval landscapes: settlement, society, environment.

Tom Williamson. Shaping Medieval landscapes: settlement, society, environment. TOM WILLIAMSON. Shaping Medieval landscapes: settlement, society,environment. x+214 pages, 59 illustrations. 2003. Macclesfield:Windgather; 0-9538630-6-9 paperback 16.99 [pounds sterling]. This book is a review and analysis of data and theories about theformation and development of the medieval landscape, always a theme thatgenerates much interest. England has a very complex and varied landscapehistory and the author has restricted himself to a large sample, beingEast Anglia East Anglia(ăng`glēə), kingdom of Anglo-Saxon England, comprising the modern counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. It was settled in the late 5th cent. by so-called Angles from northern Germany and Scandinavia. , the East Midlands and the northern Home Counties. The studyarea gives a wide range of landscape types in terms of settlement, fieldsystem and enclosure history. It also has a variety of soils, whichWilliamson demonstrates is a very important parameter that helps toexplain much of the diversity. Chapter 1 begins with a review of open-fields, noting there are twomain types of countryside, classed by Rackham as'planned'--that of the east Midlands with late Parliamentaryenclosure and large villages--and 'ancient' countryside withhamlets, intricate roads and thick irregular hedges. Williamsoncorrectly notes that this is an over-simplification with examples ofeach type mixed within the other, and that intermediate types alsooccur. However, we must not forget that these present-day differencesrefer to enclosed field systems and that, in the thirteenth century, thearable landscapes of the two regions would visually be much moresimilar, with expanses of open-field strips in most areas. He discussescritically the theories of the origins of open fields (nearly all ofwhich deal only with the Midland type) that have been presented by manyauthors since Seebohm in 1883, noting the significant contribution ofarchaeology since the 1970s. The body of the book consists of a discussion of the study regionin terms of demography, tenure and land use characteristics. It is notpossible in a short review to cover all the many themes examined, so Iwill select a few as examples. Chapter 2, 'Field and Forest', considers site density andpopulation estimates from Roman times to 1086, quoting data suggestingthat, on boulder clays, Romano-British sites occur on average about onefor every square kilometre Square kilometre (U.S. spelling: square kilometer), symbol km2, is a decimal multiple of the SI unit of surface area, the square metre, one of the SI derived units. 1 km2 is equal to: 1,000,000 m2 100 ha (hectare) Conversely: 1 m2 = 0. --not true for the west of the region.Population no doubt fell after the Roman period, as proved by theabandonment of so many sites. Then there is the difficult problem oflocating and interpreting the remains of early and middle Saxonsites--even in this region where, with Lincolnshire, workers have beenmore successful in locating Saxon sites than anywhere else in England.The example of Barton Bendish Barton Bendish is a village and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. It is situated about 7 miles (10 km) east of the town of King's Lynn and 35 miles (55 km) west of the city of Norwich.[1]The civil parish has an area of 15. , Norfolk, by Rogerson, elegantly shows howshifting settlement patterns can be mapped by fieldwork. Examples of co-axial (hedged) field patterns are illustrated for anarea west of St Albans and near Scole in south Norfolk This article is about South Norfolk District Council. For South Norfolk Parliament constituency, see South Norfolk (UK Parliament constituency). South Norfolk is a local government district in Norfolk, England. , where largeblocks of land are divided into an irregular rectangular networkcontaining long lines In communications, circuits that are capable of handling transmissions over long distances. . The author ascribes a prehistoric date to them,but these interesting field patterns are receiving much study. Bull, inhis Buckinghamshire example also assumes a prehistoric date. However, asimilar system in Essex has been given a late Saxon or early medievaldate by Rippon. More examples occur in East Sussex East Sussex,county (1991 pop. 670,600), 693 sq mi (1,795 sq km), extreme SE England. It comprises seven administrative districts: Brighton, Eastbourne, Hastings, Hove, Lewes, Rother, and Wealden. The county, the seat of which is Lewes, borders the English Channel. . Chapter 3, 'The Champion Region', examines field-systemtypes in detail. The west of the region has large villages and extensiveopen fields. Regarding the date of their formation, the evidence ofabandonment of middle Saxon sites that lie under the medieval fields isquoted, and its relevance to village nucleation nu��cle��a��tionn.1. The beginning of chemical or physical changes at discrete points in a system, such as the formation of crystals in a liquid.2. The formation of cell nuclei. . Some townships haveregular tenurial cycles of strips that likely are to be pre-Conquest butnot necessarily dating to the time of village nucleation. Within the area of champion fields there are many pockets of morecomplex arrangements and dispersed settlement A dispersed settlement is one of the main types of settlement pattern used by landscape historians to classify rural settlements found in England. In a typical dispersed settlement, there are a number of separate farmsteads scattered throughout the area. , such as near theboundaries of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. A thirdvariety of landscape, 'the sheep-corn lands,' was found in thesouth and east on well drained chalky and sandy soils: arable fieldswere less extensive and often irregular in their organization; there wasmuch pasture and some of it was 'convertible' to arable for afew years and left again as pasture. Chapter 4, 'Woodland', discusses the dispersed nature ofsettlement and fields that are or were associated with woods. Theserange from common-edge settlements to villages concentrated in valleyscutting through boulder clay in Essex, to the sparser settlement of theChilterns. Contrasting with the wooded regions are the extensive ditchedstrip fields of the medieval silt fenland. Williams sees the 'thetechnological revolution' of the heavy plough as a key to theexploitation of the claylands and this theme is further developed inChapter 6, 'Plough and Furrow'. Chapter 5, 'Field andFold', explains the nature of settlement and fields on lightsoil's, and Chapter 7, 'Meadow and Green', studies thedistribution and impact of greens, commons, meadow and pasture over thewhole region. Most chapters end with a useful summary, and the volume concludeswith a discussion of 'Landscape, Society and Environment',which covers the themes of social change and the open fields, lordship,tenure and woodland landscapes. Having examined population and lordship,it becomes clear that neither correlate with settlement type or fieldsystem. Among the models proposed are that population expansion causedintermixed arable in the west where nucleated villages were formed asspaces were filled. In regions with poorer soils, a dispersed pattern ofsettlement was the norm with discontinuous discontinuous/dis��con��tin��u��ous/ (dis?kon-tin��u-us)1. interrupted; intermittent; marked by breaks.2. discrete; separate.3. lacking logical order or coherence. cropping shifts. The book is well illustrated with good photographs and clear plansand has a full up-to-date bibliography. On the front cover is a finepicture of sheep admiring ridge and furrow The term ridge and furrow is often used by archaeologists and others to describe the pattern of peaks and troughs created in a field and caused by the system of ploughing used during the Middle Ages in Britain. bathed in springtimeearly-morning light, but, when looking to discover where it is, we aredisappointed to be told no more than that it lies in 'theMidlands'. This is a stimulating volume that reviews and reinterprets all themain literature on the formation and development of villages and fields,from their early beginnings in the Saxon era to more recent times. It isessential reading for all those in any way interested in the landscape. DAVID HALL Dept. of Archaeology, University of Exeter, Exeter, England.