Landscape And Settlement In Medieval Wales

Recent research and fieldwork on the settlement and landscape of Medieval Wales presented at the 1994 meeting of the Welsh Archaeological Congress is here set down for all to read. The contributions are: Landscape and settlement (Nancy Edwards); Wetland reclamation on the Gwent levels (Stephen Rippon); Landscape of Gwent and the Marches as seen through the Charters (C Hurley); The royal courts of the Welsh princes in Gwynedd, AD 400-1283 (David Longley); The locations of the royal courts of 13th century Gwynedd (N Johnston); Aerial photography and historic landscape on the Great Orme, Llandudno (M Aris); Place-names and vegetation history as a key to understanding settlement in the Conwy Valley (D Hooke); Transhumance and settlement on the Welsh uplands: A view from the Black Mountain (A Ward); Historic settlement surveys in Clwyd and Powys (Robert Silvester); Post-conquest and pre-conquest villages in Pembrokeshire (J Kissock); Small boroughs in south-west Wales (K Murphy); New Radnor: the topography of a planned town (R J Silvester); Medieval Wales: a summing up (Christopher Dyer).

This study examines the structure of the early medieval Welsh landscape. Using a cantref (hundred) in south-west Wales as a case study, it draws on a multidisciplinary, comparative analysis to overcome the limits imposed by restricted material culture survival and limited written sources. It examines the patterns of power and habitual activity that defined spaces and structured lives, and considers the temporal relationships, both seasonal and longue durée, that shaped them. Four key findings are presented. Firstly, that key areas of early medieval life - agriculture, tribute-payment, legal processes and hunting - were structured by a longstanding seasonal patterning that is preserved in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Welsh law, church and well dedications and fair dates. Secondly it presents, at cantref level, the first systematic survey of assembly site evidence in Wales, and sets it in comparative context. Thirdly, it demonstrates that, though poor material culture preservation and limited written records have hitherto restricted identification and characterisation of key locations in the early medieval Welsh landscape, a multidisciplinary dataset allows effective identification of focal zones through indicators known from other areas of north-west Europe. Fourthly, the widely-used 'multiple estate model' is found to be an inadequate descriptor of the early medieval Welsh landscape. An alternative approach is proposed. Methodologically, it demonstrates the value of a multidisciplinary approach, especially the systematic use of place-names which is novel in a Welsh context. It also provides key resources for other researchers by geolocating pre-1700 place-names from a previously published survey; creating GIS resources (polygons and geolocated databases) from the 1840s tithe map and schedules for parishes in its detailed case study areas; and providing a geolocated database of 16th-century demesne and Welsh-law landholdings in the cantref.

First published in 1982, The English Medieval Landscape was written to recreate and analyse the development of the major elements of the medieval landscape. Illustrated with maps and photographs, the book explores the nature of the English landscape between 1066 and 1485, from farms and chases to castles, monastic settlements, villages, roads, and more. The English Medieval Landscape will appeal to those with an interest in medieval history and British social history.

Twenty-three contributions by leading archaeologists from across Europe explore the varied forms, functions and significances of fortified settlements in the 8th to 10th centuries AD. These could be sites of strongly martial nature, upland retreats, monastic enclosures, rural seats, island bases, or urban nuclei. But they were all expressions of control - of states, frontiers, lands, materials, communities - and ones defined by walls, ramparts or enclosing banks. Papers run from Irish cashels to Welsh and Pictish strongholds, Saxon burhs, Viking fortresses, Byzantine castra, Carolingian creations, Venetian barricades, Slavic strongholds, and Bulgarian central places, and coverage extends fully from north-west Europe, to central Europe, the northern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Strongly informed by recent fieldwork and excavations, but drawing also where available on the documentary record, this important collection provides fully up-to-date reviews and analyses of the archaeologies of the distinctive settlement forms that characterized Europe in the Early Middle Ages.

The Anglo-Saxon period was crucial in the development of England's character: its language, and much of its landscape and culture, were forged in the period between the fifth and the eleventh centuries. Historians and archaeologists have long been fascinated by its regional variations, by the way in which different parts of the country displayed marked differences in social structures, settlement patterns, and field systems. In this controversial and wide-ranging study, the author argues that such differences were largely a consequence of environmental factors: of the influence of climate, soils and hydrology, and of the patterns of contact and communication engendered by natural topography. He also suggests that such environmental influences have been neglected over recent decades by generations of scholars who are embedded in an urban culture and largely divorced from the natural world; and that an appreciation of the fundamental role of physical geography in shaping human affairs can throw much new light on a number of important debates about early medieval society. The book will be essential reading for all those interested in the character of the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian settlements, in early medieval social and territorial organization, and in the origins of the England's medieval landscapes. Tom Williamson is Professor of Landscape History, University of East Anglia; he has written widely on landscape archaeology, agricultural history, and the history of landscape design.

Research for and the writing of this book was funded by the award of a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship. The period c. AD300--1050, spanning the collapse of Roman rule to the coming of the Normans, was formative in the development of Wales. Life in Early Medieval Wales considers how people lived in late Roman and early medieval Wales, and how their lives and communities changed over the course of this period. It uses a multidisciplinary approach, focusing on the growing body of archaeological evidence set alongside the early medieval written sources together with place-names and personal names. It begins by analysing earlier research and the range of sources, the significance of the environment and climate change, and ways of calculating time. Discussion of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries focuses on the disintegration of the Roman market economy, fragmentation of power, and the emergence of new kingdoms and elites alongside evidence for changing identities, as well as important threads of continuity, notably Latin literacy, Christianity, and the continuation of small-scale farming communities. Early medieval Wales was an entirely rural society. Analysis of the settlement archaeology includes key sites such as hillforts, including Dinas Powys, the royal crannog at Llangorse, and the Viking Age and earlier estate centre at Llanbedrgoch alongside the development, from the seventh century onwards, of new farming and other rural settlements. Consideration is given to changes in the mixed farming economy reflecting climate deterioration and a need for food security, as well as craft working and the roles of exchange, display, and trade reflecting changing outside contacts. At the same time cemeteries and inscribed stones, stone sculpture and early church sites chart the course of conversion to Christianity, the rise of monasticism, and the increasing power of the Church. Finally, discussion of power and authority analyses emerging evidence for sites of assembly, the rise of Mercia, and increasing English infiltration, together with the significance of Offa's and Wat's Dykes, and the Viking impact. Throughout the evidence is placed within a wider context enabling comparison with other parts of Britain and Ireland and, where appropriate, with other parts of Europe to see broader trends, including the impacts of climate, economic, and religious change.

This is a book which puts the environment back where it belongs - at the centre of the historical stage. It is essential reading for all those interested in the history of the English landscape, social and economic history, and the way that life was lived in the medieval countryside.