Las sociedades humanas han concebido su relación con el espacio físico en el que habitaban en tér... more Las sociedades humanas han concebido su relación con el espacio físico en el que habitaban en términos territoriales. Este concepto dota a la noción de territorio de una serie de significados sociales y culturales, convirtiéndolo así en un instrumento de articulación de las complejas y cambiantes relaciones entre grupos sociales y medio natural. Generalmente la territorialidad se examina desde el prisma de los estados modernos como zonas perfectamente delimitadas, tanto desde un punto de vista topográfico como desde una óptica del significado político. Sin embargo, se trata de una visión parcial, que no toma en consideración la existencia de otras formas de territorialidad existentes en sociedades preindustriales. La Alta Edad Media, un periodo que cubrió los siglos VI al XI aproximadamente, fue un auténtico laboratorio de territorialidad. Los modelos romanos, fuertemente condicionados por el poder imperial, se diluyeron y surgieron nuevas y muy diversas formas de articulación del territorio. Las sociedades locales se convirtieron en protagonistas activas, al crear patrones territoriales que sirvieron de escenario para implementar las relaciones con la autoridad central, al tiempo que se fueron construyendo los espacios episcopales y se crearon “lugares centrales” de nuevo cuño. Esta compleja relación entre lo local y lo englobante se aborda en este volumen a través de un conjunto de estudios que cubren la Península Ibérica, Inglaterra, Irlanda e Italia. La construcción de la territorialidad en la Alta Edad Media es una obra deliberadamente orientada hacia una historiografía de escala europea que supere las miradas exclusivamente nacionales.
Life on the Edge: Social, Political and Religious Frontiers in Early Medieval Europe. Neue Studien zur Sachsenforschung, 2017
By definition, liminal spaces exist outside the sphere of normal everyday activity — they form ‘t... more By definition, liminal spaces exist outside the sphere of normal everyday activity — they form ‘thresholds’ of or between different structures and behaviours; but there are many instances in Anglo-Saxon England where liminal locations can be recognised as important loci of social, political and legal interaction, as gateways that simultaneously divide and unite. This function is very clearly displayed in the positioning of sites of public assembly on major regional or national boundaries. This paper uses historical, archaeological and toponymic evidence to examine this ‘liminal centrality’ and the importance of thresholds in defining political groups and the geography of Anglo-Saxon England.
Venues of outdoorr assembly are an important type of archaeological site. Using the example of ea... more Venues of outdoorr assembly are an important type of archaeological site. Using the example of early medieval (Anglo-Saxon; 5th–11th centuries A.D.) meeting places in England we describe a new multidisciplinary method for identifying and characterizing such sites. This method employs place name studies, field survey, and phenomenological approaches such as viewshed, sound-mark, and landscape character recording. While each site may comprise a unique combination of landscape features, it is argued that by applying criteria of accessibility, distinctiveness, functionality, and location, important patterns in the characteristics of outdoor assembly places emerge. Our observations relating to Anglo-Saxon meeting places have relevance to other ephemeral sites. Archaeological fieldwork can benefit greatly by a rigorous application of evidence from place name studies and folklore/oral history to the question of outdoor assembly sites. Also, phenomenological approaches are important in assessing the choice of assembly places by past peoples.
Las sociedades humanas han concebido su relación con el espacio físico en el que habitaban en tér... more Las sociedades humanas han concebido su relación con el espacio físico en el que habitaban en términos territoriales. Este concepto dota a la noción de territorio de una serie de significados sociales y culturales, convirtiéndolo así en un instrumento de articulación de las complejas y cambiantes relaciones entre grupos sociales y medio natural. Generalmente la territorialidad se examina desde el prisma de los estados modernos como zonas perfectamente delimitadas, tanto desde un punto de vista topográfico como desde una óptica del significado político. Sin embargo, se trata de una visión parcial, que no toma en consideración la existencia de otras formas de territorialidad existentes en sociedades preindustriales. La Alta Edad Media, un periodo que cubrió los siglos VI al XI aproximadamente, fue un auténtico laboratorio de territorialidad. Los modelos romanos, fuertemente condicionados por el poder imperial, se diluyeron y surgieron nuevas y muy diversas formas de articulación del territorio. Las sociedades locales se convirtieron en protagonistas activas, al crear patrones territoriales que sirvieron de escenario para implementar las relaciones con la autoridad central, al tiempo que se fueron construyendo los espacios episcopales y se crearon “lugares centrales” de nuevo cuño. Esta compleja relación entre lo local y lo englobante se aborda en este volumen a través de un conjunto de estudios que cubren la Península Ibérica, Inglaterra, Irlanda e Italia. La construcción de la territorialidad en la Alta Edad Media es una obra deliberadamente orientada hacia una historiografía de escala europea que supere las miradas exclusivamente nacionales.
Life on the Edge: Social, Political and Religious Frontiers in Early Medieval Europe. Neue Studien zur Sachsenforschung, 2017
By definition, liminal spaces exist outside the sphere of normal everyday activity — they form ‘t... more By definition, liminal spaces exist outside the sphere of normal everyday activity — they form ‘thresholds’ of or between different structures and behaviours; but there are many instances in Anglo-Saxon England where liminal locations can be recognised as important loci of social, political and legal interaction, as gateways that simultaneously divide and unite. This function is very clearly displayed in the positioning of sites of public assembly on major regional or national boundaries. This paper uses historical, archaeological and toponymic evidence to examine this ‘liminal centrality’ and the importance of thresholds in defining political groups and the geography of Anglo-Saxon England.
Venues of outdoorr assembly are an important type of archaeological site. Using the example of ea... more Venues of outdoorr assembly are an important type of archaeological site. Using the example of early medieval (Anglo-Saxon; 5th–11th centuries A.D.) meeting places in England we describe a new multidisciplinary method for identifying and characterizing such sites. This method employs place name studies, field survey, and phenomenological approaches such as viewshed, sound-mark, and landscape character recording. While each site may comprise a unique combination of landscape features, it is argued that by applying criteria of accessibility, distinctiveness, functionality, and location, important patterns in the characteristics of outdoor assembly places emerge. Our observations relating to Anglo-Saxon meeting places have relevance to other ephemeral sites. Archaeological fieldwork can benefit greatly by a rigorous application of evidence from place name studies and folklore/oral history to the question of outdoor assembly sites. Also, phenomenological approaches are important in assessing the choice of assembly places by past peoples.
... 12 Reynolds, A. (2009), Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs, Oxford: Oxford University Press; ... more ... 12 Reynolds, A. (2009), Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs, Oxford: Oxford University Press; A. Reynolds (2009), The Emergence of Anglo-Saxon Judicial Practice: The Message of the Gallows, Aberdeen: Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies. Refbacks. ...
Papers from the Institute of Archaeology, Jan 1, 2009
Current interest in Middle Anglo-Saxon (c.CE 650-850) settlement topography, eco-nomics and archa... more Current interest in Middle Anglo-Saxon (c.CE 650-850) settlement topography, eco-nomics and archaeology is being reflected in a number of recently published papers. Former archaeological and theoretical foci on the large semi-or proto-urban trading settlements, known ...
Fieldtrips (excursions, museum visits) are an integral part of most CE and HE undergraduate progr... more Fieldtrips (excursions, museum visits) are an integral part of most CE and HE undergraduate programmes in Archaeology. For these programmes, fieldtrips are regarded as key contexts in which students learn both how to engage with and think about physical archaeological data, and to ‘see’ archaeologically. Given archaeology’s concern with material culture and the environment many practitioners have argued that field-practices, i.e. those which take place outside the classroom, are axiomatic in the creation of disciplinary knowledge (and these are accordingly enshrined in the subject benchmark statement, OAA 2000). However, despite this belief, teaching practices in the ‘real’ world of the field remain largely unexamined educational contexts. The aim of this project is to explore the learning environment, the best means of delivery, and the assessment of archaeological fieldtrips, focussing on the central theme of critical reflection.
The project highlights and discusses several forms of reflection: a) The subjective experience of archaeological fieldtrips, i.e. the learner’s viewpoint of the fieldtrip b) Peer interaction and engagement with the institutional practices of archaeological fieldtrips, including emphases on power relationships between participants, self and group regulation and resistance c) Disciplinary concerns, including phenomenological engagement with archaeological materials / landscapes d) Tutor’s experience of fieldtrips
Selected papers from workshops organized by The Assembly Project (TAP). TAP represents the first ... more Selected papers from workshops organized by The Assembly Project (TAP). TAP represents the first international collaborative project dedicated to investigating the role of assemblies in the emergent power structures of medieval northwest Europe (A.D. 400–1500). The eight papers in this volume fall into three sections. The first, Debating Sources, examines the age and role of assemblies, mainly through the use of written sources. The second section, Systems of Power, contains studies from Norway and England, which together demonstrate the similarities and differences in administrative organization in the large geographical area under scrutiny by TAP. The third and final section, entitled Places of Assembly, deals with the archaeological evidence of assembly sites, placing them within the judicial networks in the landscape, from Shetland to Iceland and the wider North Atlantic Norse settlements.
The resource comprises two complementary datasets produced by ‘The South Oxfordshire Project’, fu... more The resource comprises two complementary datasets produced by ‘The South Oxfordshire Project’, funded by The Leverhulme Trust in 2012–15. The project’s objective was to investigate how from the early Middle Ages to the seventeenth century inhabitants’ values, perceptions and sense of identity were related to the places in which they lived. The project started in 2011 as a pilot study organized jointly by VCH Oxfordshire and the University of Oxford, and funded by the John Fell Fund. Under the leadership of Dr Stephen Mileson, and thanks to Leverhulme funding, it was expanded to a three-year programme of research running until September 2015.
The research used intensive documentary and landscape research alongside concepts drawn from anthropology and sociology in order to understand the changing relationship between landscape character, settlement type and perceptions of landscape, locality and community. The study area comprised over 10,000 ha of mixed landscape in the former hundred of Ewelme. The hundred’s 14 parishes included nucleated villages and large open fields (in the vale) as well as dispersed settlements and early enclosed wood-pasture landscapes (in the Chilterns). The area has a rich collection of documents and early estate maps, and strong archaeological potential. Analysis of documents, archaeology, standing buildings, early field-names and peasant bynames was framed around a GIS database constructed by Dr Stuart Brookes.
The project’s archive comprises a spatial database of vector files, which were created by digitizing historic maps of the 14 parishes of Ewelme hundred (Oxfordshire). The digital archive consists of (1) a shapefile of all digitised fields and settlements of the 14 parishes in the South Oxfordshire hundred of Ewelme in the 19th century. Based on tithe maps of c.1840 and the Newington enclosure map of 1812 (used because the Newington tithe map depicts only the townships of Brookhampton and Holcombe); (2) an interpretative shapefile, based on medieval and early modern documents and maps, showing settlement and land use believed to be in existence c.1300. The database includes settlement areas (villages, hamlets and isolated farmsteads), arable land, pasture (including meadow) and woodland. Open-field strips are shown where depicted on 16th- to 19th-century maps; they would actually have been more extensive in the 14th century, but the map nevertheless conveys the dominance of common-field farming in the vale and its minimal presence in the Chiltern parishes of Nettlebed, Nuffield and Swyncombe.
It is axiomatic that travel and transportation in the human past adapted itself to physical obsta... more It is axiomatic that travel and transportation in the human past adapted itself to physical obstacles in the landscape. Amongst these, terrain, water features, vegetation, and surface conditions, were powerful influences on the transportation geography. So too, might they be modified by transportation: road improvements, bridges, causeways, or tunnels, were all means by which natural obstacles could be overcome, but these required corresponding levels of cooperative action, labour, infrastructure, and planning. There are intimate relationships too between topography and modes of transport, which range from pack animals to wheeled vehicles and between terrain and the kind of commodities and goods being transported.
In order to examine the effects of the physical landscape on past transportation geography, we have created an omnidirectional landscape connectivity map of England and Wales. Based on a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of the region, the map attempts to describe the principal paths and corridors as defined purely from the slope of the terrain. This approach allows archaeologists to approximate the complex matrix of accessibility and isolation in a given landscape and to assess to which degree topography could have shaped interaction dynamics of past human communities (see Palmisano 2015). In future work, as part of the project Travel and Communication in Anglo-Saxon England we will examine the further effect on movement of other obstacles such as rivers and vegetation, but it is hoped in the meantime that this map inspires other research on spatial interactions in the past.
The map was created in several steps. First, a friction surface was created from a slope map derived from the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) available from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) of 2000 (http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/). Each grid cell was assigned a resistance value based on the slope degree (see Ericson and Goldstein 1980). Second, we created two pairs of horizontal and vertical parallel strips having zero resistance and used the open source software Circuitscape (http://www.circuitscape.org/) in pairwise option to simulate the flow of current in both west-east and north-south directions (McRae and Shah 2009). Finally, the two resulting current density maps were combined by multiplication in order to generate an omnidirectional connectivity map (see Pellettier et al. 2014).
The resulting map shows a number of sharp corridors of connection (light grey filaments) of different scales and distributions. Other areas (dark filaments) were less well connected. This omnidirectional connectivity map can be used quantitatively to address a range of questions regarding past societies in England and Wales, for e.g.:
Can particular settlement types be related to ‘natural’ corridors of movement (e.g. at pinchpoints or ‘crossroads’, as ‘strings’ along corridors, etc?
Is trade, the movement of resources, or cultural contact influenced by ‘natural’ corridors? Does the distribution of portable objects relate to the distributary network of terrain?
Does the physical road network complement or cut ‘against the grain’ of natural corridors?
How do social, political and territorial configurations relate to natural corridors?
This chapter, covering the late Anglo-Saxon and Norman Conquest period, outlines the major change... more This chapter, covering the late Anglo-Saxon and Norman Conquest period, outlines the major changes in land use which accompanied the creation of small local manors and the establishment of collaborative open-field farming. Those changes reflected the shift in relations from ones predominantly organized around social networks to ones of property ownership. Domesday Book supplies a crucial piece of evidence, in light of which fragmentary earlier evidence for the structure of the royal estate of Benson can be better understood. The strong implications of the period’s developments for inhabitants’ perceptions are examined, including through the boundary clauses accompanying royal land charters and the evidence for more structured settlements and systems of administration, including the hundred and its moot.
The second chapter describes the physical character of the study area in detail as a framework fo... more The second chapter describes the physical character of the study area in detail as a framework for understanding the analysis supplied in the chapters to follow. It also sets out the main sources drawn upon in the book, notably the physical remains of archaeology and the fabric of the historic landscape itself, as well as documentary sources such as Anglo-Saxon charter bounds, manorial records, deeds, legal records, and maps, which yield data about the use of space and about inhabitants’ perceptions, the latter particularly revealed by the field names and bynames coined by local people themselves, and by legal depositions dealing with contested ownerships and customary practices. Key archaeological sources include village earthworks, excavated and standing buildings, and botanical and zooarchaeological remains. Archaeological fieldwork carried out as part of the project is described, including fieldwalking, test pit and trial trench excavation, extensive buildings survey, and measur...
ABSTRACT Historians and archaeologists are increasingly interested in moving beyond landscape rec... more ABSTRACT Historians and archaeologists are increasingly interested in moving beyond landscape reconstruction and economics to investigate how past inhabitants perceived their environment. This reflects the subject's intrinsic interest and an awareness of the importance of decisions made by ordinary people in shaping the development of the countryside. However, the evidence available makes it difficult to uncover mentalities and attitudes. To date, most attention has been paid to particular features which seem to say most about self-perception and beliefs, but the greatest advances will arguably be made by studying the landscape as a whole. This article explains the approach to popular perceptions being adopted by ‘The South Oxfordshire Project’, an interdisciplinary analysis of fourteen parishes encompassing lowland clay vales and Chilterns wood-pasture from the early Middle Ages to the mid seventeenth century.
The Anglo-Saxon Kent Electronic Database (ASKED) is a collaboratively built research tool, develo... more The Anglo-Saxon Kent Electronic Database (ASKED) is a collaboratively built research tool, developed to facilitate the doctoral research of two students of the UCL Institute of Archaeology: Stuart Brookes, investigating state formation in Anglo-Saxon East Kent, and Sue Harrington, examining aspects of gender and craft production in early Anglo-Saxon England with particular reference to the early kingdom of Kent. The aim of ASKED was to enumerate all those individuals within eastern Kent for the period AD 400-750 for whom there is archaeological burial evidence. The project produced a comprehensive electronic register of the archaeological remains and material culture of these populations, thus providing for the first time a searchable corpus of this information. The database lists 52 cemeteries from eastern Kent, as well as the inhumations and objects interred within. Information for these burials is derived from published reports and the inspection of museum archival material
In the summer of 2015 archaeological excavation sought to examine the location of an early mediev... more In the summer of 2015 archaeological excavation sought to examine the location of an early medieval hundred meeting place (‘moot’) in southern Wiltshire. The investigation was planned in the context of recent work to characterise hundred meeting places and to explore the survival of local Roman roads into the medieval period (Baker and Brookes 2015; Langlands forthcoming a; Brookes et al. forthcoming). Stowford provided an opportunity to bring these different concerns together. The site lies 2km west of Broad Chalke and 200m southwest of the hamlet of Fifield Bavant in the extreme east of Ebbesbourne Wake parish. Excavations centred on NGR SU 016 248 in fields immediately south of the River Ebble which flows west to east from Ebbesbourne Wake to Broad Chalke before joining the River Avon at Bodenham. The valley floor is generally flat at around 92m above Ordnance Datum but rises sharply to the south and to the north of the Ebble. The underlying solid geology is Lewes Nodular Chalk F...
This Geographic Information Systems (GIS) database collects together information on bridges and o... more This Geographic Information Systems (GIS) database collects together information on bridges and on fording points attested in the documentary records and in archaeological surveys in England to the middle of the thirteenth century. By bringing together documentary references, archaeological material and onomastic information this database provides a comprehensive digital resource for the study of this key aspect of the medieval English transport and communications infrastructure. It is part of the Leverhulme Trust funded project 'Travel and Communications in Anglo-Saxon England' conducted at the UCL Institute of Archaeology and the Institute for Name-Studies, University of Nottingham. Modern scholarship, including the outcomes of the Travel and Communications project, has shown that the overall shape of the pre-Modern English overland transport network was fundamentally in place by the Central Middle Ages. Any road system in a terrain and climate as wet as that of England must solve the challenges presented by the hydrological features of the landscape, and fords, bridges, causeways and ferry points were necessarily a key aspect of the experience of historical travel. The great bulk of medieval bridge-sites and fording points in England had been established by the middle of the thirteenth century. The preceding generations had witnessed enormous economic growth and an unprecedented increase in the population. The accompanying efforts to improve the road transport infrastructure fell especially on improvements of river crossings and the construction of new bridges. In aggregate these constitute the most substantial investment made to the overland transport network between the Roman period and the turnpikes of the seventeenth century. Bridges and river crossings anchored the English road network in space, and once established it proved remarkably durable. The medieval bridge-network appears to have been able to meet the transport requirements of the country up to the eve of the Industrial Revolution: the number of bridges in the mid-eighteenth century was approximately the same as in the Middle Ages. The building of bridges, in particular monumental stone bridges, was an economic and political statement. Bridges may have been built in response to contemporary needs but once in place they exerted a lasting influence on the shape and character of the local and regional transport network. Medieval bridges and river crossings were therefore a key long-term influence on the fundamental underpinnings of the urban, commercial and social development of the country. The database draws upon two major sources of information: surveys of historical bridges and place-name data. Among the former Edwyn Jervoise's four-volume Ancient Bridges series (Architectural Press, 1930-6) was the first comprehensive survey of historical bridges in England and Wales, many of which date to the Middle Ages. David Harrison's The Bridges of Medieval England: Transport and Society 400-1800 (Oxford University Press, 2004) provides a modern updated study of medieval bridge building and its socio-economic importance. Their work is enormously expanded by onomastic studies. Place-names elements such as brycg "bridge, causeway" and ford "river-crossing" capture vital information on the human historical landscape that is otherwise beyond the reach of direct written or archaeological sources.
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consideración la existencia de otras formas de territorialidad existentes en sociedades preindustriales. La Alta Edad Media, un periodo que cubrió los siglos VI al XI aproximadamente, fue un auténtico laboratorio de territorialidad. Los modelos romanos, fuertemente condicionados por el poder imperial, se diluyeron y surgieron nuevas y muy diversas formas de articulación del territorio. Las sociedades locales se convirtieron en protagonistas activas, al crear patrones territoriales que sirvieron de
escenario para implementar las relaciones con la autoridad central, al tiempo que se fueron construyendo los espacios episcopales y se crearon “lugares centrales” de nuevo cuño. Esta compleja relación entre lo local y lo englobante se aborda en este volumen a través de un conjunto de estudios que cubren la Península Ibérica, Inglaterra, Irlanda e Italia. La construcción de la territorialidad en la Alta Edad Media es una obra deliberadamente orientada hacia una historiografía de escala europea que supere las miradas exclusivamente nacionales.
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studies, field survey, and phenomenological approaches such as viewshed, sound-mark, and landscape character recording. While each site may comprise a unique combination of landscape features, it is argued that by applying criteria of accessibility, distinctiveness, functionality, and location, important patterns in the characteristics of outdoor assembly places emerge. Our observations relating to Anglo-Saxon meeting places have relevance to other ephemeral sites. Archaeological fieldwork can benefit greatly by a rigorous application of evidence from place name studies and folklore/oral history to the question of outdoor assembly sites. Also, phenomenological approaches are important in assessing the choice of assembly places by past peoples.
consideración la existencia de otras formas de territorialidad existentes en sociedades preindustriales. La Alta Edad Media, un periodo que cubrió los siglos VI al XI aproximadamente, fue un auténtico laboratorio de territorialidad. Los modelos romanos, fuertemente condicionados por el poder imperial, se diluyeron y surgieron nuevas y muy diversas formas de articulación del territorio. Las sociedades locales se convirtieron en protagonistas activas, al crear patrones territoriales que sirvieron de
escenario para implementar las relaciones con la autoridad central, al tiempo que se fueron construyendo los espacios episcopales y se crearon “lugares centrales” de nuevo cuño. Esta compleja relación entre lo local y lo englobante se aborda en este volumen a través de un conjunto de estudios que cubren la Península Ibérica, Inglaterra, Irlanda e Italia. La construcción de la territorialidad en la Alta Edad Media es una obra deliberadamente orientada hacia una historiografía de escala europea que supere las miradas exclusivamente nacionales.
studies, field survey, and phenomenological approaches such as viewshed, sound-mark, and landscape character recording. While each site may comprise a unique combination of landscape features, it is argued that by applying criteria of accessibility, distinctiveness, functionality, and location, important patterns in the characteristics of outdoor assembly places emerge. Our observations relating to Anglo-Saxon meeting places have relevance to other ephemeral sites. Archaeological fieldwork can benefit greatly by a rigorous application of evidence from place name studies and folklore/oral history to the question of outdoor assembly sites. Also, phenomenological approaches are important in assessing the choice of assembly places by past peoples.
The project highlights and discusses several forms of reflection:
a) The subjective experience of archaeological fieldtrips, i.e. the learner’s viewpoint of the fieldtrip
b) Peer interaction and engagement with the institutional practices of archaeological fieldtrips, including emphases on power relationships between participants, self and group regulation and resistance
c) Disciplinary concerns, including phenomenological engagement with archaeological materials / landscapes
d) Tutor’s experience of fieldtrips
The research used intensive documentary and landscape research alongside concepts drawn from anthropology and sociology in order to understand the changing relationship between landscape character, settlement type and perceptions of landscape, locality and community. The study area comprised over 10,000 ha of mixed landscape in the former hundred of Ewelme. The hundred’s 14 parishes included nucleated villages and large open fields (in the vale) as well as dispersed settlements and early enclosed wood-pasture landscapes (in the Chilterns). The area has a rich collection of documents and early estate maps, and strong archaeological potential. Analysis of documents, archaeology, standing buildings, early field-names and peasant bynames was framed around a GIS database constructed by Dr Stuart Brookes.
The project’s archive comprises a spatial database of vector files, which were created by digitizing historic maps of the 14 parishes of Ewelme hundred (Oxfordshire). The digital archive consists of (1) a shapefile of all digitised fields and settlements of the 14 parishes in the South Oxfordshire hundred of Ewelme in the 19th century. Based on tithe maps of c.1840 and the Newington enclosure map of 1812 (used because the Newington tithe map depicts only the townships of Brookhampton and Holcombe); (2) an interpretative shapefile, based on medieval and early modern documents and maps, showing settlement and land use believed to be in existence c.1300. The database includes settlement areas (villages, hamlets and isolated farmsteads), arable land, pasture (including meadow) and woodland. Open-field strips are shown where depicted on 16th- to 19th-century maps; they would actually have been more extensive in the 14th century, but the map nevertheless conveys the dominance of common-field farming in the vale and its minimal presence in the Chiltern parishes of Nettlebed, Nuffield and Swyncombe.
In order to examine the effects of the physical landscape on past transportation geography, we have created an omnidirectional landscape connectivity map of England and Wales. Based on a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of the region, the map attempts to describe the principal paths and corridors as defined purely from the slope of the terrain. This approach allows archaeologists to approximate the complex matrix of accessibility and isolation in a given landscape and to assess to which degree topography could have shaped interaction dynamics of past human communities (see Palmisano 2015). In future work, as part of the project Travel and Communication in Anglo-Saxon England we will examine the further effect on movement of other obstacles such as rivers and vegetation, but it is hoped in the meantime that this map inspires other research on spatial interactions in the past.
The map was created in several steps. First, a friction surface was created from a slope map derived from the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) available from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) of 2000 (http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/). Each grid cell was assigned a resistance value based on the slope degree (see Ericson and Goldstein 1980). Second, we created two pairs of horizontal and vertical parallel strips having zero resistance and used the open source software Circuitscape (http://www.circuitscape.org/) in pairwise option to simulate the flow of current in both west-east and north-south directions (McRae and Shah 2009). Finally, the two resulting current density maps were combined by multiplication in order to generate an omnidirectional connectivity map (see Pellettier et al. 2014).
The resulting map shows a number of sharp corridors of connection (light grey filaments) of different scales and distributions. Other areas (dark filaments) were less well connected. This omnidirectional connectivity map can be used quantitatively to address a range of questions regarding past societies in England and Wales, for e.g.:
Can particular settlement types be related to ‘natural’ corridors of movement (e.g. at pinchpoints or ‘crossroads’, as ‘strings’ along corridors, etc?
Is trade, the movement of resources, or cultural contact influenced by ‘natural’ corridors? Does the distribution of portable objects relate to the distributary network of terrain?
Does the physical road network complement or cut ‘against the grain’ of natural corridors?
How do social, political and territorial configurations relate to natural corridors?
Modern scholarship, including the outcomes of the Travel and Communications project, has shown that the overall shape of the pre-Modern English overland transport network was fundamentally in place by the Central Middle Ages. Any road system in a terrain and climate as wet as that of England must solve the challenges presented by the hydrological features of the landscape, and fords, bridges, causeways and ferry points were necessarily a key aspect of the experience of historical travel.
The great bulk of medieval bridge-sites and fording points in England had been established by the middle of the thirteenth century. The preceding generations had witnessed enormous economic growth and an unprecedented increase in the population. The accompanying efforts to improve the road transport infrastructure fell especially on improvements of river crossings and the construction of new bridges. In aggregate these constitute the most substantial investment made to the overland transport network between the Roman period and the turnpikes of the seventeenth century.
Bridges and river crossings anchored the English road network in space, and once established it proved remarkably durable. The medieval bridge-network appears to have been able to meet the transport requirements of the country up to the eve of the Industrial Revolution: the number of bridges in the mid-eighteenth century was approximately the same as in the Middle Ages. The building of bridges, in particular monumental stone bridges, was an economic and political statement. Bridges may have been built in response to contemporary needs but once in place they exerted a lasting influence on the shape and character of the local and regional transport network. Medieval bridges and river crossings were therefore a key long-term influence on the fundamental underpinnings of the urban, commercial and social development of the country.
The database draws upon two major sources of information: surveys of historical bridges and place-name data. Among the former Edwyn Jervoise's four-volume Ancient Bridges series (Architectural Press, 1930-6) was the first comprehensive survey of historical bridges in England and Wales, many of which date to the Middle Ages. David Harrison's The Bridges of Medieval England: Transport and Society 400-1800 (Oxford University Press, 2004) provides a modern updated study of medieval bridge building and its socio-economic importance. Their work is enormously expanded by onomastic studies. Place-names elements such as brycg "bridge, causeway" and ford "river-crossing" capture vital information on the human historical landscape that is otherwise beyond the reach of direct written or archaeological sources.