Agricultural History Review, Volume 60 Part 1 (2012), p. 134

Nicholas Higham’s introduction offers not only an excellent indication of the book’s contents but also summarizes the many changes that have occurred over recent decades in the interpretation of settlement development, field systems and woodland cover in early medieval England. Such changes may now be better understood because of recent progress in the techniques available to landscape archaeologists, but, as this book reveals, much as yet remains unclear. It is the companion volume to another which concentrates upon the evidence that may be derived from place-names and documents.

The papers themselves illustrate the use of developing archaeological techniques. These include experimental archaeology (in the use of timber); spatial modelling and mapping (multiple estate formation in Kent); test-pitting within present-day settlements to indicate chronological changes in settlement location; the use of illustrations showing farm implements and activities; archaeobotany and the use of climatic records; pottery collection through field walking; the use of pollen and other palaeoecological data; topographic analysis; and cemetery evidence.

The greatest interest, however, may arise from the fact that all these sources point towards the less well understood mid-Anglo-Saxon period (generally seen as c.650–c.850 AD) as a time of significant change. Breaking away from the ‘Midland-centric’ tradition of landscape research, Stephen Rippon argues that landscape transformation began rather earlier than has sometimes been assumed, in ‘the long eighth century’. Within a framework of greater territorial stability, village nucleation began to take place and agriculture began to intensify, involving the introduction of new crops and ploughing techniques as well as land use change. Much of the evidence for this has been derived from pottery collected by field walking, but in south-west England, where pottery evidence is limited, it is palaeoenvironmental data that has to be examined. Carenza Lewis shows how the collection (or non-collection) of pottery by test-pitting in East Anglia, marked by an absence of early or middle Anglo-Saxon pottery in many present-day settlements, seems to indicate a break in continuity and related settlement shift in the middle Anglo-Saxon period. New sites, ranging from village clusters to dispersed farms, most apparently dependent upon agriculture, can be detected in the late Anglo-Saxon period (c.850 until the Norman Conquest) after a period of apparent abandonment and shift. Susan Oosthuizen, in a chapter sadly depleted of much-needed plans, also argues for a process of settlement nucleation beginning in the middle Anglo-Saxon period (as Anthony Brown and Glenn Foard have long argued), again drawing attention to the ‘long’ eighth century. Debby Banham’s chapter discusses how far agricultural change was due to a shift to wheat as a staple of the Anglo-Saxon diet sometime after 700, also envisaging this as related, through the provision of better drainage, to the use of ridge and furrow ploughing and greater use of the mould-board plough. In East Anglia, the location of Christian cemeteries in close association with settlement sites, examined by Richard Hoggett, seems to have emerged rather earlier than was once thought, perhaps as early as the seventh century, coinciding with a restructuring of the landscape during the Middle Saxon period. With the extension of both settlement and agriculture at this time, Peter Murphy discusses the evidence for settlements and associated farming on the highest, but still risky, locations of the Fenland coastlands, such as on the roddons, from the seventh to ninth centuries. He also dates fish traps recorded in the estuaries of East Anglia, both sources of evidence suggesting the more intensive use of coastal resources at this time, the same period of agricultural intensification argued for elsewhere in this volume.

Several authors attempt to relate their findings to a wide contextual frame. It remains unclear how far development of the open fields was related to settlement nucleation; changes were a recurrent possibility as fashion and techniques changed, with ample scope for the remodelling of settlement patterns in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Neither were ‘open’ fields necessarily the same as ‘common’ fields. Tom Williamson reminds readers of the importance of environmental factors, suggesting that social practice could not act within an environmental vacuum. He argues that choices are likely to have been affected by soils and, to a lesser extent, climate. However, he also launches new ideas: that the same factors that facilitated cereal production and reliable harvests in eastern England also led to a freer peasantry not as inclined, through necessity, to put itself under lordly control. Furthermore he points to the influence of river valley systems and watersheds on the flow of peoples and ideas.

Although this volume is not the only one covering these themes, and many of the ideas presented here will be found scattered across the published literature, it is especially valuable that so many views are brought together here so that they can be contemplated and cross-referenced.