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Agriculture Archive
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Give us this day our daily bread: A study of Late Viking Age and Medieval Quernstones in South Scandinavia
Posted on June 19, 2013 | No CommentsPorridge and bread were by far the two most important elements in the Viking Age and medieval diet. -
The Heavy Plough and the Agricultural Revolution in Medieval Europe
Posted on June 18, 2013 | No CommentsThis research tests the long-standing hypothesis, put forth by Lynn White, Jr., that the adoption of the heavy plough in northern Europe led to increased population density and urbanization -
Feasting with Early Medieval Chiefs: Locating Political Action through Environmental Archaeology
Posted on May 18, 2013 | No CommentsThis excellent paper was the first given in the session on Early Medieval Europe. It looked at various archaeological excavations in Iceland and Denmark and the political role feasting played in pre-Christian Viking societies. -
Manure and the medieval social order
Posted on March 24, 2013 | No CommentsTaking examples from the open fields of England, it is argued that peasants used manure to differentiate their holdings from those of the lord, and by so doing helped to defne both space and their own social identity. -
The vegetarian component of a late medieval diet
Posted on March 10, 2013 | No CommentsTrondheim was the seat of an archbishop and the centre of the see of Nidaros from 1152/53 until 1537 when the reformation reached Norway and the last Norwegian archbishop, Olav Engelbrektsson, fled the country. This marked a turning point in the town’s history. The arch- bishop’s residence, Erkebispegården, which was established around AD 1170 between the cathedral and the river Nidelva. -
The Prudent Village: Risk Pooling Institutions in Medieval English Agriculture
Posted on March 9, 2013 | No CommentsThe prudent peasant chose to scatter his farm fields to protect himself and his family from idiosyncratic agricultural shocks because better alternatives did not exist. Peasants had no better way of protecting themselves from idiosyncratic agricultural shocks. -
What the Paston Letters Tell about Land Owning in the 15th Century England
Posted on January 28, 2013 | No CommentsHow do the terms on land and manors which appear in the Paston Letters reflect his observation? I pick up several terms relating to the land owning system in the England of Middle Ages and examine their distribution in the letters; i.e. the terms ‘villein, serf, demesne, bond, rent, and tenant.’ -
City and Countryside in Medieval England
Posted on January 27, 2013 | No CommentsAn impressive array of data, ranging over the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, has been collected by two full-time researchers, James Galloway and Margaret Murphy. Of primary importance for the project are demesne farming accounts and inquisitions post mortem (detailing manorial land and other assets, especially again those of the demesne), both of which sources survive in very large numbers for the period under review. Also, the project incorpor- ates large amounts of data from urban records, particularly those dealing with merchants who were prominent in organizing London's food supply. -
The Heavy Plough and the European Agricultural Revolution of the Middle Ages.
Posted on January 24, 2013 | No CommentsIn the period from the 9th century to the end of the 13th century, the medieval European economy underwent unprecedented productivity growth -
Herbs and Drugs in Monastic Gardens
Posted on January 6, 2013 | No CommentsIn those small backyards the monks planted various medical herbs from which drugs were gained and gathered to provide the monastery and the sick of the neighbourhood with medicine. Every monk, in this way, was a doctor and pharmacist as well. -
The Impact of Climate Change on Late Medieval English Culture
Posted on December 28, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis challenges the extremes of both environmental determinism and the modernist perspective that humanity exists in social and/or cultural isolation from the natural environment. -
Animal keeping and the use of animal products in medieval Emden (Lower Saxony, Germany)
Posted on December 20, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis deals with the faunal remains from several excavations in the centre of the medieval town of Emden (Lower Saxony, Germany; Figure 1-1). The aim of this thesis is to answer questions concerning the development of animal husbandry and the use of animal products in the medieval period. -
The weir and the flowing earthworks of Bedford
Posted on December 9, 2012 | No CommentsSurprisingly few urban dwellers today know in which direction their local river flows. Which way is upstream and which downstream? Such knowledge, once so crucial, no longer has much significance for town inhabitants. Other flows – of electricity, gas and oil – now provide most of the energy that the town needs. -
Plague, Settlement and Structural Change at the Dawn of the Middle Ages
Posted on December 5, 2012 | No CommentsCalculations on the number of inhabitants during these centuries are, however, impossible to make. The most famous attempt, by J.C. Russell, is, as will be revealed below, not satisfying. Using results from other studies, like those referred to above, Russell assumed hypothetical population figures without any real empirical evidence. -
Market Failure during the Great Famine in England and Wales (1315-7)
Posted on November 29, 2012 | No CommentsWhile there can be little doubt that the floods of 1314-6 were the primary harbingers of the crisis, it is, perhaps, worth asking to what extent they were the only factors behind the hardship experienced between 1315 and 1317. -
Beyond chicken: avian biodiversity in a Portuguese late medieval urban site
Posted on November 14, 2012 | No CommentsBetween 2003 and 2004, prior to the construction of an underground parking in the Avenue Miguel Fernandes, an archaeological rescue excavation was carried out by a team of archaeologists from the company Crivarque...The excavations uncovered 137 silos, of which 109 were fully excavated. The high concentration of silos turned out to be the most striking find of the archaeological works. -
Flemings in the Peasants’ Revolt, 1381
Posted on November 14, 2012 | No CommentsWhile the Peasants’ Revolt has been studied in depth by generations of medieval historians, the same cannot be said of England’s foreign-born inhabitants, and the largest group among these, the so-called Flemings (a term which was also applied to those from other principalities in the Low Countries besides Flanders). -
The pattern of settlement on the Welsh border
Posted on October 28, 2012 | No CommentsThe attempt made in this paper to answer these questions will be based almost entirely on Welsh evidence. The English evidence, examined and re- examined since the late nineteenth century, is already sufficiently familiar to members of the British Agricultural History Society. -
The Coleridge Hundred and its Medieval Court
Posted on October 28, 2012 | No CommentsWhere possible, I have given examples of the earliest type of court documented, with examples of the type of case heard, and by whom they were heard, concentrating on the Manorial and Mayor's Courts, which are the best documented, and whose Rolls nave been translated by the authors of my chief sources of reference. -
Modelling Population and Resource Scarcity in Fourteenth-century England
Posted on October 26, 2012 | No CommentsHallam argues that the steady population rise of the 12th and 13th centuries may not have been the main cause of the crisis of the 14th century. First, unprecedented harvest failures and animal diseases between 1315 and 1322 had significant adverse effects on peasant welfare. -
Managing tithes in the late middle ages
Posted on October 23, 2012 | No CommentsTithe represented a diversion to religious uses of around one-tenth of England’s agricultural wealth. -
Irrigation and taxation in Iraq 6th to 10th Century
Posted on October 20, 2012 | No CommentsWater management was crucial for agriculture in Iraq. The delicate ecological balance that allowed high soil productivity could be seriously threatened by irresponsible land administration. -
The Lands and ‘Sisterlands’ of Aberdour, c.1100-1650
Posted on October 13, 2012 | No CommentsOf the lands in Aberdour, we begin in very uncertain time long before the Sisterlands became such and a period from which few documents are available. It is thought that shortly after 1100 some of the lands in what was later to become the burgh of Aberdour came to be held by a Norman-French family, the Viponts. -
Technological Change in Medieval England: A Critique of the Neo-Malthusian Argument
Posted on October 13, 2012 | No CommentsThe last two sections will address this issue by dividing the material into two periods preceding and following the great epidemic. The interpretation that will be provided is heavily indebted to Brenner. -
Settlement and Field Structures in continental North-West Europe from the Ninth to the Thirteenth Centuries
Posted on October 10, 2012 | No CommentsSince the eighties and increasingly during the nineties there has been a renewed interest on the continent in medieval rural settlement, mainly among archaeologists and geographers