Medieval rural settlement Research Papers (original) (raw)

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- Archaeology, Landscape Archaeology, Medieval Studies, Settlement Patterns
- by Enrico Lusso
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- Medieval History, Urban History, Medieval Architecture, Medieval rural settlement

Breunsdorf liegt im Süden der Leipziger Tieflandsbucht. Für den fortschreitenden Braunkohlenabbau im Tagebau Schleenhain wurde der Ort in den Jahren 1994 bis 1996 abgerissen. Aus diesem Anlass wurde auch die Breunsdorfer Kirche vollständig ausgegraben.
Die Kirche bildete den topographischen und geistigen Mittelpunkt Breunsdorfs. Durch baugeschichtliche Untersuchungen des aufgehenden Mauerwerks vor ihrem Abbruch und die anschließenden archäologischen Ausgrabungen kann die interessante Entwicklung des Gebäudes nachgezeichnet werden, das fast die gesamte Geschichte des Dorfes begleitet hat. Das einheitliche Erscheinungsbild unserer Zeit täuschte darüber hinweg, dass der Kirchenraum über Jahrhunderte schrittweise vergrößert wurde, um mit dem Wachstum der Gemeinde Schritt zu halten.

This paper reports on the fifth year of the University of
Cambridge Higher Education Field Academy (HEFA)
project which combines education and outreach
(particularly within the secondary school sector) with the
archaeological investigation of currently occupied rural
settlements (CORS) by the excavation of 1-metre square
test pits in open spaces (mostly private gardens) within
areas currently occupied by settlement. A total of 246 test pits were excavated in 2009, nearly 100 of which
were dug by members of the public during community
test pit excavation weekends. This paper summarises the resutls of these excavtions which took place in eleven parishes across six counties in eastern England as well as in Derbyshire and Leicestershire (the latter in Kibworth carreid out as part of Michael Woods 2010 history series for BBC2 'Story of England').

- by Carenza Lewis
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- Public Archaeology, Medieval History, Pottery (Archaeology), Anglo-Saxon Studies

A non-destruktive archaeological survey recorded the last visible remains of the deserted village of Vojkov, the area of which was heavily damaged by the construction of a modern road and part of which is now covered by a modern gamekeeper's house. Only five features on site can be considered as remains of the village, three out of which probably represent houses. Ceramic finds collected during the surface survey put the beginnings of the settlement to the 13rh century. Another phase of the occupation period can be dated to the 14rh - 15'h century and the youngest finds come from 16rh - 17rh century. According to the spacial distribution of the ceramic sherds, the medieval village extended over an area of 2.5 ha. The most frequent finds from the more recent period of settlement can be found only on a much smaller area of the size of about one third of the original village, which speaks for the reduction of the village size. A partial abandonment or only a partial re-settlement of the larger medieval village deserted in the 15rh century is a probable interpretation of the results of the archaeological research.
The excavation of the part of the site threatened by the outplanting of a forest tree nursery in the northwest section of the site revealed the remains of the oldest village settlement
from the 13rh century. In the 14rh - 15rh century a part of this space was used as a refuse area with thousands of ceramic sherds; we do not understand its purpose and there are no analogies for this kind of feature in the medieval village environment. From the most recent early modern phase of the settlement the excavation revealed a part of a house. The excavation uncovered a timber chamber and the remains of a black kitchen with stone lining that formed a portion of a three-part house, the front room of which has been irreversibly destroyed by the recent extraction of soil. Behind the house there was an open space and a refuse area covering an older rubbish pit, in which were deposited the remains of a burnt house from the 16rh century including its inventory. The house was destroyed by a catastrophic fire that we connect with the abandonment of the village documented by the written sources (see Kodera, this volume). During the study of the numerous finds from the abandonment layer that contributes to the so far not well understood material culture of the early modern village environment, we gain an accurate historic context and a date ante quem of the end of the year 1622 to the year 1623.

Kniha vyšla v Petrohradu roku 1984 / The book was published in St. Petersburg in 1984.

- by Digital library Bohemia
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- Archaeology, Architecture, Medieval History, Medieval Studies
- by Bert Groenewoudt
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- Medieval rural settlement, Open Field, Plaggendekken, Essen
- by incontri tra/montani
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- Art History, Alpine history, Medieval rural settlement, Mountain communities

This paper presents the results of two different campaigns of archaeological excavations (August 2015 and August 2016) in the medieval castle of Castel Pizigolo (Toano, RE) conducted by Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, Department of History and Cultures. This research brought to light a tower, a church and a building, and helped us to define and understand the topography of the settlement. Moreover, the archaeological excavations have highlighted the chronology of the castle, from XII to XV century, with former phases of IX-X century

The popular image of the borderlands, between England and Scotland in the Middle Ages, is one dominated by violence in a sparsely populated desolate landscape. The view of the Anglo-Scottish border as a largely unsettled area has influenced landscape management, particularly in the 20th century, with the creation of extensive areas of forestry plantation. Recent archaeological work in a small part of the border, in the modern English county of Cumbria, is beginning to reveal another perspective. Using a 1603 survey in conjunction with archaeological landscape survey, the late medieval landscape can be reconstructed, revealing a denser settlement pattern of farmsteads and hamlets, surrounded by large fields, many of which were cultivated. The process of settlement abandonment and shrinkage was just beginning in the early 17th century, but the main period of desertion seems to be linked to after the pacification of the borderlands, when agricultural improvement and landscape-scale reorganisation would have been more achievable. The survey shows that the popular image of the borderlands is overly simplistic, and that it is the result of complex processes that requires greater understanding of its historic development.

- by Caron Newman and +1
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- Landscape Archaeology, Medieval Archaeology, Medieval rural settlement, Anglo-Scottish Borders Literature

The Kyklades or Cycladic Islands have always been popular amongst archaeologists working on the Aegean Bronze Age and the 'glorious' Classical Greek past. In contrast, not much light has been shed upon aspects of post-Roman life on the islands. Research into the post-medieval period has been a subject mainly for historians and folklorists. This paper attempts to explore aspects of the lifestyle of the peoples who inhabited this island group throughout the more recent, yet most neglected centuries of Greek history, using archaeological, textual and other sources and methods. My aim is to reconstruct everyday rural life in Greece, by focusing on the domestic sphere and addressing questions concerning society and the domestic material culture of a littoral area that has remained traditional until very recently.
This paper examines some .first results of the CYRE.P. (Cyclades Research Project) and introduces examples concerning the domestic material culture of the late medieval and post-medieval periods (early 13th-late 19th centuries) in the Aegean Islands of the Cyclades, with particular reference to housing, furniture and internal.fittings, costumes and embroideries.

- by Athanasios Vionis
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- Historical Geography, Historical Archaeology, Medieval Dress, Social Identity
- by Hajnalka Herold
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- Archaeology, Historical Archaeology, Landscape Archaeology, Medieval Studies

Rafał Kubicki (University of Gdańsk)
Water mills and rural settlement in the Dominion of the Teutonic Order in Prussia
The study is devoted to the closer discussion of the issue of location, economic function and the legal status of water mills in the Dominion of the Teutonic Order in Prussia. The aim of it was also to indicate factors having the largest impact on the shape of the water mills network existing here in the Medieval period. The situation in Prussia was determined by the policy of the Teutonic Order. The Order not only did it control the right for building water mills in knight’s estates but also, except in several cases, constituted the sole owner of water mills situated in towns. It was indeed possible only due to the fact that the Teutonic Order, as the biggest land owner in the state, had water regale at its own disposal. It would give it the opportunity to plan a network of mills relevant to the needs of the settlement network in foundation.
The location of a watermill resulted above all from the real occurring economic needs and adequate water conditions. Authorities tried to keep the largest possible influence on the decisions on locating new buildings. Owing to that, on one hand, in the content of documents detailed provisions banning constructions of new mills in a given distance from the already existing ones would be included, and on the other, a system of incentives was applied in the form of milling coercion enforcing specific settlements to use only the designated mill. Town and villages location laws are abundant with references to the existence of mills or, even more often, just the plans of building them. The Order, bishops and chapters, while issuing the documents, often reserved for themselves the right to construct such a machinery, excluding parts of the terrain needed for that purpose from general location laws. Issuing a permit to build and utilise water mills in exchange for rent and the system of reservation, had a considerable impact on the way mill networks were created and the rules of their functioning. Planning the economy of rural area in terms of water mills allocation was also manifested by establishing separate mill hamlets, which enjoyed the status of independent settlement units.
Water mills constituted an important element of the economic infrastructure of rural areas, and that their functions were closely related to the organisation of villages as well as the farms production profile, thus with the scale of grain cultivation in juxtaposition to animal husbandry. It also meant that millers had to cooperate closely with the village community, sometimes by means of regulations included in mill laws and location documents of individual settlements. Within the framework of colonisation campaign conducted by the Teutonic Order in Prussia, based on locating towns and villages, also a development of a whole economic infrastructure commenced, of which an important part, the water mill was. Attempts to control that process occurred already at the stage of town or village location, which is indicated in the mentioned clauses of reserving the places for anticipated milling facilities. Later, analogical control was exercised over newly built or redeveloped mills. The economic crisis of the state observed in the middle of the 15th century, indicated by the phenomenon of desolation of villages, would also result in water mill network regression.

- by Rafał Kubicki
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- Medieval Studies, Cistercians, Medieval rural settlement, Ancient Prussians

Uno dei caratteri originali dell’identità geografica e culturale europea si formò, fra XII e XIV secolo, grazie a un imponente processo di creazione e di sviluppo di villaggi, borghi e città nuove, assai diversificato nel tempo e nello spazio. La spontaneità di tale fenomeno fu non di rado incanalata e guidata, nei suoi esiti territoriali e urbanistici, da vere e proprie ondate di ‘fondazioni’ che influirono in modo decisivo sulle caratteristiche dei paesaggi urbani europei.
Evidenze paesaggistiche diverse fecero forse sì che i primi segni di ‘maturazione’ della coscienza di questi aspetti venissero emergendo sin dalla fine dell’Ottocento sia nella storiografia tedesca, attenta al processo di nuove fondazioni nell’est dell’Elba, sia in quella francese, che sin dal 1880 affrontò in modo unitario il complesso tema della fondazione delle bastides, nel sud-est del paese.
In Italia tale coscienza maturò più tardi, negli anni Settanta del secolo scorso, dalla convergenza scientifica e di competenze fra alcuni architetti – quali Giampiero Vigliano – o storici dell’arte, come David Friedman, e una generazione di medievisti nutriti dalle letture delle opere di Marc Bloch e Georges Duby, ansiosa di collaborazioni pluridisciplinari e di mettere a frutto i dati della nascente archeologia medievale.
Nel Cuneese di quegli anni si poterono così estendere, in chiave di storia dell’insediamento e dei paesaggi urbani, le conoscenze storico-politiche conquistate dalla scuola positivistica, rappresentata a fine Ottocento da Lorenzo Bertano, e da quella crociana, espressa verso il 1970 da Piero Camilla.
Fu in questo nuovo clima culturale, attentissimo ai problemi della conoscenza e della valorizzazione del “patrimonio” locale, che, in un orizzonte storiografico europeo e in un contesto locale ormai attento alla storia dei paesaggi rurali e alle dinamiche del popolamento, crebbe e maturò il tema affrontato in questo volume.
Fu però soltanto verso la fine degli anni Ottanta del Novecento che l’attività scientifica della Società per gli studi Storici di Cuneo riuscì a catturare l’attenzione, maggiore che in passato, di alcune amministrazioni civiche che reggevano centri di fondazione di origine medievale. Di questa attività scientifica, che si sviluppava in stretto rapporto con le iniziative di valorizzazione dei comuni, è rimasta ampia traccia nelle pubblicazioni e nei volumi della stessa Società.
È da questa tradizione di convergenze scientifiche e di indagini multidisciplinari, ormai ben radicata nel Cuneese, che prende origine il volume Borghi nuovi. Paesaggi urbani del Piemonte sud-occidentale. Esso, infatti, nato da un progetto scientifico della Società studi-storici sostenuto dalla Fondazione CRT e dalla Presidenza del Consiglio regionale del Piemonte, si è avvalso delle competenze di docenti e ricercatori del Politecnico di Torino e delle Università degli Studi di Torino, Milano e Bergamo, concretizzando un caso di felice collaborazione fra atenei e istituti di ricerca storico-territoriale.
L’auspicio è che gli esiti dell’indagine possano essere di supporto a nuovi approfondimenti in altre regioni dell’Occidente europeo per una conoscenza comparativa più estesa di un processo-chiave nella storia dei paesaggi urbani; la speranza è di contribuire alla valorizzazione comune di uno dei tratti peculiari dell’identità storica dell’Europa, che sarebbe auspicabile politicamente davvero unita, pur nell’incomparabile ricchezza delle sue diversità.

Análisis del desarrollo de la aldea de Don Benito durante el periodo medieval

This report shows how it is possible to collate Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data for historic settlement nucleation and dispersion with a range of data on environmental variables in order to investigate the relationships between them. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression model specification, selection and validation procedures, followed by further analysis using spatial regression methods, identified environmental variables that appear to have had the most significant influence on settlement organisation. The use of OLS and spatial regression and the innovative Relative Area Overlap (RAO) technique has enabled investigation of how relationships between key environmental variables and historic settlement organisation varied across England. Overall, the regression analyses indicate that far more of the variation in the measures of settlement organisation is not explained by the environmental variables than is explained by them. The results of the RAO analysis echo this conclusion. Using unsupervised classification, it has been possible to develop new, national-scale characterisations of historic settlement organisation and of key environmental variables. These new classifications of historic settlement organisation often broadly align with Brian Roberts and Stuart Wrathmell’s delineations of provinces, sub-provinces and local regions, but the cluster outlines and Roberts and Wrathmell’s boundaries diverge more often than they agree.

During the 15th century the population of Romney Marsh, using the term in the broad sense, declined to a fraction of its former size. A study of Dengemarsh manor shows a remarkable stability of settlement and land-holding in the first three decades of the century. There were numerous small tenements comprising farmsteads with adjoining fields. The pattern probably remained relatively unchanged until the 1480s when land was engrossed to produce much larger holdings. The village of Old Romney contracted in the early 16th century having changed little in size since the late 14th century. By contrast, there is no evidence for a decrease in size in the nearby town of Lydd. The main period of engrossment and probably also of settlement abandonment is identified as the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Some of the reasons for these changes were the demand for wool from the local Wealden cloth industry and the absence of by-employment on the marsh to support smallholders.

- by Mark Gardiner
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- Medieval rural settlement, Wetland Archaeology

Non-destructive research ofthree sites in Blovicko (Plzeň Region) has been carried out within aproject centred
upon deserted medieval and postmedíeval settlements in a forest environment. In two cases, deserted late-medieval
villages were documented, while the third location in a forested area revealed a settlement from the early Middle Ages.
The two other recent villages also contained evidence of earlier settlement activities.

The paper presents the settlement structure of the Zgornja Gorenjska region in the Middle Ages. It begins with
the period immediately preceding the Slavic settlement, continues with describing the early Slavic settlement and
concludes with the colonisation during the high Middle Ages, which mainly concentrated on lowland areas. The 13th
century witnessed the settlement of economically less favourable areas in valleys and at higher elevations. The paper
contains two tables indicating the numbers of farms in villages that appear in written sources for the period of around
1330 and for the end of the 15th century. The paper also provides a total number of farms in the area under discussion
and attempts to give an approximate number of the population. The table referring to the end of the 15th century, in
particular, is more representative and realistic.

- by Gašper Oitzl
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- Medieval History, Medieval rural settlement, Slovenian History
- by Denis Henrard and +3
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- Archaeology, Late Middle Ages, Medieval History, Medieval Studies

The cultural landscape in the vincinity of Oświn lake [NE Poland]

- by Enrico Lusso
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- Medieval History, Urban History, Medieval Architecture, Medieval rural settlement

IN 2006 a large oval earthwork dating form the early 11th century was discovered in a parcel of woodland near the hamlet of Appel in the Gelderse Valley in the Netherlands. Small scale trial trenches showed inside the earthwork traces of a settlement dating from the 11th to 16th century. Among the features was a sunken hut used for storage of grain and smithing and bronze casting. In the southern part of the enclosure a circular moat was found surrounding a parcel with a diameter of c 12 m. Finds from the maot suggest that on this parcel a brick and wooden towerlike building must have been erected in the 13th century. The building remained in use untill the (ealry) 16th century. In the area directly around the earthwork several rows of iron ore extraction pits were found.
The earthwork is possibly connected with the so called 'hof (curtis) of Appel' mentioned in the written sources from the second half of the 10th century untill the 16th century. This curtis was owned by the counts of Hamaland and around 960 given to the abbey of Elten (presentday Germany). In the vicinity of the earthwork the remains of the later curtis of Elten are located in a wooded area. A dirt road still connects the earthwork with this location.

An archaeological excavation was carried out at De La Beche, Aldworth following an evaluation, which had previously identified the remains of a possible building. The excavation revealed two phases of buildings dating from the 12th century and the 13th century. Little of the earlier building survived. The later building had two internal surfaces: a beaten-earth floor and a cobbled area, both of which were probably roofed over. In addition, a apparently external drain, parallel to the walls, was investigated. Berkshire Archaeological Research Group carried out a resistivity survey with inconclusive results. The second structure excavated was probably an ancillary building to the manor complex built in the middle of the 13th century, and which was then demolished at an unknown point in the course of probably the 14th or possibly 15th century.

This paper presents the results of an investigation into the extent to which it might be possible to identify and record evidence for children's play from medieval settlement site excavations, using evidence form archaeology, history, history of art and folklore studies. The paper concludes that such evidence is likely to survive and argues that a great awareness of the possible role of children in contributing to the archaeological record would lead to more such evidence being recognised. Published in Childhood in the Past, vol 2, 2009.

This user manual summarises lidar data processing and evaluation (by using of ArcMap software) for the purpose of archaeological research. It is based on the Czech commercial product (DTM 5G) but after the creation of DEM the procedure... more

- by Lukáš Holata
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- Landscape Archaeology, Archaeological Method & Theory, LiDAR, Archaeological GIS
- by Roberto Bellosta
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- Late Middle Ages, Rural History, Local History, Medieval rural settlement
- by Mathieu Fannee
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- Medieval rural settlement, Death Penalty, Rechtspraak, Warmond
- by Laurent Schneider
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- Medieval Studies, Space and Place, Monastic Studies, Early Medieval Archaeology
- by Mathieu Fannee
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- Rural History, Medieval rural settlement, Veenontginning, Ontginningsgeschiedenis