Identity, Naming, and Division

We focus on evidence of naming the landscape in the medieval period starting with evidence from Domesday Book (1086 AD) and then moving backwards. We make links between names, the use of the landscape, and issues of identity. Landscapes would have been named in all periods. We consider what can be said of earlier landscapes for which evidence is scant or non-existent. Enclosure and naming were probably linked, in that when smaller parcels of land, such as fields, were created the are likely to have been given names in order to refer to them. We think about boundaries as evidence of sacred landscapes and end with conclusions on long-term continuities and differences. The landscapes of the early medeieval period stand out from those earlier, especially after the divisions, such as parishes, imposed by the church.

Scale

A crucial consideration for any approach to landscape is that of scale. People in the past operated at a series of scales from the very local to long distance sets of connections, so that often most evidence is generated by life in the local area, structuring the nature of evidence. The balance between local, regional and long-distance action varies between periods, with longer distance connections most obvious in the Roman period, when Britain was connected to the empire. We start with a general consideration of questions of scale, before moving to consider the Roman period more specifically. We focus on the nature of villas as microcosms of the landscapes in which they sit, looking at where building materials come from, using good information from Isle of Wight villas as a case study. We play with the ideas that villas sit in landscapes, but also represent those landscapes in a condensed form.

Movement

This chapter presents means for modelling movement including information on the nature of the terrain, contrasting also movement by land and by water. We also used the densities and distribution of archaeological evidence as a proxy for land use and movement. In addition, we include place name evidence for the early medieval period and the little we have from the Romano-British period. The results of our model are compared with possible routes on land and water for various periods to throw light on patterns of movement and impediments to connections between areas.

Substances and Cycles

This chapter looks at two sets of evidence for food: first, we consider the archaeological evidence of bones, plant remains, and pottery, each a direct indication of the food consumed; we also gather together and synthesize information on isotopes from human and animal bones for periods from the Iron Age to the early medieval period. Isotope data shows changes over time and space, reinforcing the idea that the Roman rural economy was more intensive than that of other periods. We are able to identify a series of regional food cultures and changes through time, looking also at the influence of towns from the late Iron Age onwards. We integrate the evidence through a consideration of the thought of Deleuze and De Landa.

Characterful Data

Our project was a ‘Big Data’ project in that it used all available digital sources on English archaeology. This chapter introduces our data and the notion that data are characterful, which is to say that they are shaped and influenced by the ways they are created, curated, and used. We outline our approach to making data compatible, and some of the influences on how evidence is preserved and then discovered and recovered. We aimed to experiment with the data, rather than provide any final or definitive interpretation of them. Sources of information on this scale are susceptible to many interpretations and approaches. However, we also hope to have brought out crucial aspects of the archaeological evidence from England and followed many of the main topic areas currently of interest. We end with an evaluation of our working practices and some influences on our results.

Long-Term Interactions between Society and Ecology

The clearance history of England is reviewed looking first at what can be reconstructed of the patterns of forest and clearance across the country. A broad distinction is seen between more forested landscapes in the north and west, with greater clearance in the south and east. The forests of the north may have seen managed grazing, rather than being wild wood. From the start of the Roman period, the north was cleared as well, creating greater similarity across the country as a whole. We also look at the history of soil erosion, which is linked to clearance. We end by comparing two river basins—the Thames and the Eden—which have contrasting ecologies, topologies, and histories of human use.

Time

We cannot think about space, without also considering time, especially as the landscape can be seen to be the richest set of historical evidence we have. We present two case studies. The first concerns the long-term continuities in the use of the intertidal zone, where wooden structures are often preserved by the water. This tells us about use of the sea, but also of the forests which supply wood for sea side structures. We then turn to a major analysis of the reuse of round barrows, first built in the early Bronze Age, but of differing interest to all later periods.

Landscapes and Identities

This chapter pulls together the themes of the volume as a whole, looking back at the nature of the evidence, providing a synthesis of landscape use and considering again issues of identities. We review the nature of our evidence, as well as the possibilities and difficulties posed by working with large amounts of information. We review the broader differences found across England, either side of a line roughly from Torquay to Whitby, where south and east of that line more settlements and artefacts occurred than north and west. These differences indicate long-term contrasts in ways of life in both areas. We end by considering the complex question of identities, taking seriously issues of scale. An English identity was produced through a political project in the early medieval period and would not have existed in this form earlier.

Patterns in the Data across England

We look at regional variability in the manner in which archaeologists have worked, regional differences in the types of evidence found, and how we can understand different ways of life across England in the past with some long-term continuities to these differences. Overall, we see a broad distinction between the south and east and the north and west, with fewer artefacts in the latter region and perhaps also more mobile ways of life in many periods. We also present a series of case studies, designed to give more detailed insights into a large number of contrasting areas across England, adding nuance to the broad distinctions identified above.

Field Systems, Orientation, and Cosmology

We start with history of past work on field systems, as well as an outline of different fields, starting with the so-called Celtic fields to the medieval open field systems. We undertake a computer-based analysis of the layout and orientation of fields from the Bronze Age to the end of the Roman period, showing that there are persistent orientations, which probably had to do with the rising and setting sun, which lasted millennia. The landscape was used for pragmatic reasons, primarily the growing of food, but was also laid out following long-lasting cosmological principles probably linked to the movement of the sun and perhaps other bodies in the night sky. The biggest change in the layout of the landscape occurred in the early medieval period, when strip fields had quite different orientations from fields of earlier periods. At important element of this chapter is the presentation of a methodology which can be used on digital versions of other field systems in Britain or elsewhere.