|
The London Basin’s gravel churches: indications of geology, medieval history and geographical distribution: John F. Potter Ferruginously-cemented gravels, sandy-gravels and sands, quarried originally from superficial, fluvial, fluvioglacial deposits, form an important building constituent of early London Basin churches. Their occurrence in the various churches relates very closely to the recognised geographical distribution of the respective, parent geological bodies. Similarly, clast compositions in the gravels of the different church fabrics reflect the understood geological sedimentary distribution patterns. The evidence suggests that London Basin churches which contain superficially deposited ferruginously-cemented materials in their walls are likely to possess Anglo-Saxon or earliest Norman origins.
The use of soil analysis in the interpretation of an early historic landscape at Puxton in Somerset: S. J. Rippon, M. H. Martin and A. W. Jackson Soil samples taken from two adjoining fields close to the village of Puxton in the county of North Somerset, UK, were analysed in 1997 for heavy metals, phosphorus, magnetic susceptibility and loss on ignition as part of an archaeological investigation of the origins and development of a medieval settlement. It had been argued that an oval-shaped field next to the church was the nucleus of marshland reclamation during the early medieval period, though it was unclear whether the enclosure was occupied by a settlement or was simply an area of embanked agricultural land. Soil chemistry shows certain elements, including phosphorus and the heavy metals (Pb, Zn, Cd, Cu, etc), to be concentrated in a restricted part of the enclosure, which earthwork, resistivity and fieldwalking surveys suggest correlated with the area of human occupation associated with the dumping of midden material near by (a hypothesis confirmed through excavation). This paper demonstrates the value of multifaceted soil chemistry, alongside a range of other survey methods, for characterising the nature of human activity on archaeological sites, which in the future may be used to locate previously unrecorded sites in more speculative landscape surveys.
Medieval settlement and landscape change on Anglesey: David Longley In 1283 the Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd was conquered by Edward I of England and the royal lands of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd passed into the control of the English Crown. This case study examines aspects of the bond settlements at two Anglesey maerdrefi (royal estate centres) in the two south-western commotes of Malltraeth and Menai. It attempts to determine more closely their location and character and to chart the transformation of the landscape from the Age of the Princes, through the sale of Crown land in the seventeenth century, to the present day. Recent studies have drawn attention to the potential for locating the llysoedd of the Welsh princes of Gwynedd during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, at the core of their royal estates, through the use of documentary evidence and targeted fieldwork (Johnstone 1997). The work of Glanville Jones has considered the organisation of the maerdref in general and maerdref Aberffraw in particular (for example, Jones 1979). However, less attention has been paid, in detail, to the settlements of the bond tenants of the Prince which, it is argued, are likely to have been concentrated in nucleated villages (Carr 1982, p. 31), or to the ancillary components of the estates which constitute the immediate landscape. The components of medieval settlement on Anglesey are described in the context of the administrative and tenurial framework. These provide background to the study of settlement and landscape change on lands formerly held by the Princes of Gwynedd. The pattern is one of increasing consolidation of holdings and the amalgamation of individual small tenancies, with large properties in the hands of a small number of landowners. The dispersed arable quillets of an earlier landscape can be seen to have been increasingly brought together in parcels and closes. By the early nineteenth century, the superimposition of large fields, characterised by ruler-straight boundaries where once ran sinuous strips in open field, has obscured and all but obliterated the pattern of the medieval landscape.
Land division and cultural influence in late medieval northern Sweden: Birgitta Roeck Hansen In the northern part of Sweden, in the old province of Västerbotten, permanent rural settlement and agriculture was a late occurrence. During the early phases of development only small, consolidated areas of arable were used. In the fourteenth century, following a peace treaty with the principality of Novgorod, the Swedish state began to take measures to secure its supremacy in the region. An open-field system was introduced at about the same time as taxation on land. The investigated area formed part of a region encompassing both the western/Swedish and eastern/Finnish coast of the Gulf of Bothnia characterised by similarities in natural resources and living conditions. Cultural influence from Finland could be found in the whole of the area, in a later phase mixed with elements from central Sweden.
The industrial town in Gwynedd: David Gwyn Within Gwynedd, industry, in the shape of slate quarrying, and to a lesser extent, working for stone and minerals, developed in a patchy way, comparatively late, within a landscape and a culture that was to remain in many ways rural. Many quarrymen and miners preferred to remain on the land, and made their homes in dispersed cottage settlements. Others established themselves in entirely new towns, which are now recognised as outstanding examples of nineteenth-century industrial communities. This article discusses the origins, growth and morphology of four of these towns, and argues that their distinctive evolution is the result of the structure of local landownership in the course of the nineteenth century.
Danebury, its environs, and the Iron Age in Hampshire: John Collis Review article of The Danebury Environs Programme: the Prehistory of a Wessex Landscape, vols 1-2, by Barry Cunliffe and Cynthia Poole, English Heritage/Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, Oxford 2000.
Review section |
|
Landscape History
Volume 23 (2001) |
