Journal article
An integrated bioarchaeological approach to the medieval ‘agricultural revolution’: a case study from Stafford, England, c.Ad 800–1200
- Abstract:
- In much of Europe, the advent of low-input cereal farming regimes between c.ad 800 and 1200 enabled landowners—lords—to amass wealth by greatly expanding the amount of land under cultivation and exploiting the labour of others. Scientific analysis of plant remains and animal bones from archaeological contexts is generating the first direct evidence for the development of such low-input regimes. This article outlines the methods used by the FeedSax project to resolve key questions regarding the ‘cerealization’ of the medieval countryside and presents preliminary results using the town of Stafford as a worked example. These indicate an increase in the scale of cultivation in the Mid-Saxon period, while the Late Saxon period saw a shift to a low-input cultivation regime and probably an expansion onto heavier soils. Crop rotation appears to have been practised from at least the mid-tenth century.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Version of record, 1.7MB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1017/eaa.2020.6
Authors
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Journal:
- European Journal of Archaeology More from this journal
- Volume:
- 23
- Issue:
- 4
- Pages:
- 585-609
- Publication date:
- 2020-03-25
- Acceptance date:
- 2020-01-14
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1741-2722
- ISSN:
-
1461-9571
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
pubs:1083058
- UUID:
-
uuid:5e3e8d6a-2f87-4971-9c44-49f735cee1be
- Local pid:
-
pubs:1083058
- Source identifiers:
-
1083058
- Deposit date:
-
2020-01-16
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- European Association of Archaeologists
- Copyright date:
- 2020
- Rights statement:
- © European Association of Archaeologists 2020 This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record