People and Space in the Middle Ages, 300-1300

Description

With illustrations by Alex Langlands. This book compares community definition and change in the temperate zones of southern Britain and northern France with the starkly contrasting regions of the Spanish meseta and Iceland. Local communities were fundamental to human societies in the pre-industrial world, crucial in supporting their members and regulating their relationships, as well as in wider society. While geographical and biological work on territoriality is very good, existing archaeological literature is rarely time-specific and lacks wider social context; most of its premises are too simple for the interdependencies of the early medieval world. Historical work, by contrast, has a weak sense of territory and no sense of scale; like much archaeological work, there is confusion about distinctions - and relationships - between kin groups, neighbourhood groups, collections of tenants and small polities. The contributors to this book address what determined the size and shape of communities in the early historic past and the ways that communities delineated themselves in physical terms. The roles of the environment, labour patterns, the church and the physical proximity of residences in determining community identity are also examined. Additional themes include social exclusion, the community as an elite body, and the various stimuli for change in community structure. Major issues surrounding relationships between the local and the governmental are investigated: did larger polities exploit pre-existing communities, or did developments in governance call local communities into being? List of Figures vii List of Photos x List of Plates xi List of Tables xii Note on Glossary Entries xiii Acknowledgements xiv List of Abbreviations xv Introduction: Community Definition and Community Formation in the Early Middle Ages – Some Questions / WENDY DAVIES 1 Social Identities on the Macro Scale: A Maximum View of Wansdyke / ANDREW REYNOLDS AND ALEX LANGLANDS 13 Settlement Organization and Farm Abandonment: The Curious Landscape of Reykjahverfi, North-East Iceland / BIRNA LÁRUSDÓTTIR 45 Geography, Communities and Socio-Political Organization in Medieval Northern Iceland / CHRIS CALLOW 65 Communities of Dispersed Settlements: Social Organization at the Ground Level in Tenth- to Thirteenth-Century Iceland / ORRI VÉSTEINSSON 87 Boundaries of Knowledge: Mapping the Land Units of Late Anglo-Saxon and Norman England / STEVEN BASSETT 115 Mapping Scale Change: Hierarchization and Fission in Castilian Rural Communities during the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries / JULIO ESCALONA 143 Central Places and the Territorial Organization of Communities: The Occupation of Hilltop Sites in Early Medieval Northern Castile / IÑAKI MARTÍN VISO 167 The Ending of the Roman City: The Case of Clunia in the Northern Plateau of Spain / ADELA CEPAS 187 Villas, Territories and Communities in Merovingian Northern Gaul / GUY HALSALL 209 Community, Identity and the Later Anglo-Saxon Town: The Case of Southern England / GRENVILLE ASTILL 233 Marmoutier: 'Familia' versus Family. The Relations between Monastery and Serfs in Eleventh-Century North-West France / PAUL FOURACRE 255 Narrating Places: Memory and Space in Medieval Monasteries / ANTONIO SENNIS 275 Populations, Territory and Community Membership: Contrasts and Conclusions / WENDY DAVIES 295 Glossary / COMPILED BY GUY HALSALL 309 Bibliography 321 Index 347