Early Medieval Settlement and Social Power: The Middle Anglo-Saxon ‘Home Farm’

THE LAST TWO DECADES have witnessed a marked rise in middle Anglo-Saxon settlement research, as archaeologists have become increasingly aware of the way in which this transformative period in English history can be recognised through habitation sites. Though a period during which individuals and institutions seemingly wielded unprecedented new power, archaeologists have struggled to identify many of the processes or ‘motors’ by which such authority was articulated in the landscape. This paper concerns itself with understanding one such driver, demonstrating how early medieval kings shifted power from tribute-orientated regimes to ones rooted in agricultural exploitation. The Church was fundamental to this shift in authority, and was used as a means of consolidating new power relations. In order to sustain more permanent clerical communities, the Church developed core agricultural areas surrounding their centres, known as inland, upon which were established early types of ‘home farm’. In addition to their functional purpose middle Anglo-Saxon ‘home farms’ were subject to exceptionally high degrees of spatial ordering. Such definition of settlement space, which now included property plots and houses defined by boundaries of unprecedented permanence, allowed elites to shape and consolidate perceptions of social order in the landscape. Power was now being materialised, not only through agricultural production but also through the lived experience of rural communities, as a social hierarchy which considered the place of kings as divinely appointed became firmly established.     

Country stories: the use of oral histories of the countryside to challenge the sciences of the past and future

Abstract

In the context of recent media, governmental, academic and popular attention and enthusiasm for debates surrounding the construction and meaning of the British countryside, this paper outlines the potential for oral history to make a contribution. Drawing on work in Devon, UK, we outline how an oral history methodology can engage with the fields of archaeological science and heritage management of landscape resources from the past, before outlining how such lay narratives may also inform present policies for the landscapes of the future. On the one hand we note the potential of oral histories for animating existing scientific narratives of landscape development. Moving from a position of scientific complicity towards one of critical engagement, we then go on to argue that oral histories may also challenge the authority of scientific knowledge, serving to destabilise existing assumptions, and offering in their stead more complex, meaningful and community-led narratives of landscape.     

Landscape Archaeology,Heritage and the Community in Devon: An Oral History Approach

In the context of recent media, governmental, academic and popular attention and enthusiasm for debates surrounding the construction and meaning of the British countryside, this paper outlines the potential for oral history to make a contribution. Working in Devon, the authors outline how an oral history methodology can engage with the fields of landscape archaeology and heritage studies. As well as augmenting and supporting more traditional approaches to landscape, oral history techniques can be used to challenge and destabilise existing knowledge, thereby moving the process of ‘democratisation’ in knowledge construction of the rural landscape from practices of scientific ‘complicity’ towards one of critical engagement.     

The rise of cultural landscapes

The new interest in cultural landscapes is forcing a reappraisal of concepts of countryside heritage. First the traditional split between cultural and natural values is challenged. Second, modern landscape studies emphasise the subjectivity of landscape assessment, and this is subverting the former tendency to aspire to objectivity in evaluation. The acceptance of ‘associative’ value in landscape is an indicator of this. Modern landscape studies also emphasise the interrelationships between processes and aspects of value, and this is encouraging specialists to communicate across disciplinary frontiers. The desire by ecologists in the mid‐1980s to have cultural landscapes inscribed on the World Heritage list caused a re‐assessment of the World Heritage Criteria, and an initiative by ICOMOS brought this process to a conclusion in 1992. However the reappraisal of concepts of countryside value imply that there are many other philosophical and practical matters still to be resolved.     

Teens and territory in contested spaces: Negotiating sectarian interfaces in Northern Ireland

The purpose of this article is to examine children's experiences of territory in one location in Northern Ireland. The research draws on stories, maps and focus group interviews with 80 children aged between 14–15 years of age, living in one of the most contested interface areas in Northern Ireland. Interface areas are locations where Catholics and Protestants live side by side in segregated communities divided by peace walls and other symbolic boundaries. Within these spaces, children made distinctions between place and territory. Place was referred to in relation to physical features of the surrounding landscape but more importantly as spaces where family and friendship ties were paramount. Territory on the other hand was referred to in terms of Protestant and Catholic identity.     

Lines of Landscape Organization: Skovbjerg Moraine (Denmark) in the First Millennium BC

This paper presents a comparative landscape perspective on the Late Bronze Age landscape boundaries in southern Britain, obtained from Skovbjerg Moraine, Denmark. Using Delaunay triangulation as well as classic distribution analyses, it demonstrates that some forms of landscape division articulated already established use‐patterns, while others intercepted the central lines of movement and conflicted with previous ways of organizing the landscape. This pattern is interpreted as a new form of large‐scale landholding in which livestock played a dominant role and boundaries were used to confiscate land in the zones bordering suitable pastures. This situation shows obvious parallels with southern Britain centuries earlier. The paper discusses how the study of these physical boundaries provides new insights into the organization of pre‐Roman landscapes, not only demonstrating a continuing engagement with landscape lines, but also pointing to new concurrent and potentially competing social and economic strategies.     

Pre-Conquest estates in the west Midlands: preliminary thoughts

Pre-Conquest charters from the est Midlands provide evidence which cannot be revealed by archaeological means of the type of administrative organization within the Hwiccan kingdom. Estates comprising a number of parish units may be reconstructed but appear to have been carved out of larger territorial divisions. Nodal areas, frequently in riverine locations, appear to have been linked to areas of secondary development in more heavily wooded countryside. This association between complementary regions gave rise to a system of organization based upon sound economic foundations and the resulting pattern of regional complementarity was still apparent in the landscape at a later period. Fragmentation of administrative units was well-advanced by the mid-Anglo-Saxon period and minor units of parish or subparish size had come into being, many of which were clearly recognized as independent communities. In some areas these units had become well-established early enough for their boundaries to influence those of the ecclesiastical parishes. In the secondary areas subdivision occurred at a later date and yet other areas remained largely undeveloped without lasting demarcation. The charters also show, however, that settlement had been established throughout the Hwiccan kingdom by the later Anglo-Saxon period, with a number of minor settlements in existence beyond any village nucleus.     

Dutch pantiles in the county of Norfolk: architecture and international trade in the 17th and 18th centuries

Abstract

A series of clay tobacco pipes made in the Virginia colony in the 17th century were adorned with rouletted stars. In considering the many possible readings of their iconography, this study explores the social use of the celestial landscape, arguing that stars and constellations represented familiar features in a landscape otherwise alien to Chesapeake immigrants. They were therefore among the points of convergence which served to provide a foundation for dialogue across ethnic boundaries. Algonquian, European, and West African star lore are considered to the extent that available evidence allows, in recognition that a diversity of authors contributed to the pipes' lavish embellishment.     

A Fractal Approach to Identifying Urban Boundaries. 城市边界识别的分形方法

Fractal geometry can be used for determining the morphological boundaries of metropolitan areas. A two‐step method is proposed here: (1) Minkowski's dilation is applied to detect any multiscale spatial discontinuity and (2) a distance threshold is located on the dilation curve corresponding to a major change in its behavior. We therefore measure the maximum curvature of the dilation curve. The method is tested on theoretical urban patterns and on several European cities to identify their morphological boundaries and to track boundary changes over space and time. Results obtained show that cities characterized by comparable global densities may exhibit different distance thresholds. The less the distances separating buildings differ between an urban agglomeration and its surrounding built landscape, the greater the distance threshold. The fewer the buildings that are connected across scales, the greater the distance threshold.     

Molluscan Total Assemblages across a Woodland–Grassland Boundary and their Palaeoenvironmental Relevance

Abstract

Molluscan total assemblages across a woodland-grassland boundary are described and analysed using a variety of numerical techniques. These demonstrate that although the Mollusca respond to the vegetation boundaries their response does not exactly parallel that of vegetation structure. In particular, some shade-preferential species have encroached from woodland into adjacent grassland, degree of encroachment being an individual species characteristic. The study indicates that the detection of boundaries in sub-fossil assemblages from buried soil surfaces will only be possible if spatially-oriented multi-sampling strategies are employed.     

Patterns and Determinants of Historical Woodland Clearing in Central‐Western New South Wales,Australia

We consider the history of woodland clearing in central western New South Wales, Australia, which has led to the present highly cleared and fragmented landscape. A combined approach is used examining available historical land‐use data and using regression analysis to relate the pattern of cleared and wooded areas in the recent landscape to environmental variables, taking into account the contagious nature of clearing. We also ask whether it would be possible to apply a simple simulation modelling approach to reconstruct a credible historical sequence of clearing in the study area. The historical data indicate that annual clearing rates have varied substantially in the study area and selective tree removal (ringbarking and thinning) has been common. These findings make it unlikely that a simple simulation approach would replicate the spatial and temporal sequence of woodland loss. Our regression results show that clearing patterns can be related to environmental variables, particularly annual rainfall and estimated pre‐European vegetation type, but that patterns are dominated by contagion.     

基于GIS的南方传统聚落景观基因信息图谱的探索

南方地区环境生态因子多样,历史文化底蕴深厚,形成了极富特色的聚落景观。研究其所隐含的景观基因,对传统聚落的保护、开发都具有重要意义。本文分析了聚落景观基因的研究现状,探讨了聚落景观基因的概念、识别原则。在此基础上,探讨了构建聚落景观基因信息图谱的基本信息单元及其提取方法,并对建立景观基因信息图谱的技术思路进行了一定的尝试。最后,展望了景观基因信息图谱的研究意义和研究价值。     

Signs of the Post-Rural: Marketing Myths of a Symbolic Countryside

Geography is currently in the midst of reinterpreting the 'rural'. There are calls within tourism studies, rural geography and cultural geography for further investigation into the new meanings represented in rural places, their emergent rural identities, and the need to take postmodernism and the construction of the rural more seriously. This paper presents a critical interpretation of the format, content and signs used to represent, commodify and promote as countryside a landscape adjacent to the eastern coast of Lake Huron in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Following a brief review of the place promotion literature and the postmodern cultural context of contemporary tourism, the socio-semiotic approach employed in the analysis is explained. Using 210 pieces of printed place promotional material, gathered at tourist information booths along a provincially designated tourist route, the slogans, logos (icons), and place myths used to differentiate the rural from the urban are identified, and their role in constructing, commodifying and marketing a symbolic countryside is made clear. It is argued that the tourist landscape signified in the promotional material is a symbolic cultural landscape that draws upon dominant Anglo-American ideals of the countryside to give identity to the material landscape. The advertising discourse is thus a symbolic space where an imaginary, mythical countryside is situated; here the 'rural' is commodified and sustained by 'uneasy pleasures': the tensions created between a consumer's willing suspension of disbelief and their knowledge of an advertiser's persuasive intentions. These signs of the 'post-rural' constitute a 'rural' that is a transferable brand name—a free-floating signifier—used to give meaning, value and character to any place commodity in need of a marketable identity.     

Managment of Beached Shipwreck Archaeological Sites: Defining Stability

The archaeological remains of ships in the beach zone are part of a complex and dynamic system. Being periodically exposed and reburied, they vary between being both visible and frequently forgotten features of the physical and cultural coastal landscape. These limited and non-renewable resources are highly susceptible to instability within the landscape. Challenges to stability result in these resources being damaged, ignored, or forgotten, leading to a potential loss of pertinent social, economic, and physical information. Although little can be done to prevent certain physical actions, a better understanding of physical and cultural processes allows for their mitigation and better management practices for the beached shipwreck resource. This paper looks at how stability is defined in relation to beached shipwreck sites and how these definitions impact the management of the resource of two case study sites in Maine and North Carolina.     

Contributors

The historic region of Ohmi‐Hachiman, located in central Japan, is an example of a Continuing Landscape in an Asian setting. With a differing perspective on what may constitute authenticity, a planning exercise is now underway looking for a sustainable future for the city and surrounding countryside that is both a popular tourist attraction and a working agricultural area. Ohmi‐Hachiman combines two areas ICOMOS has declared as under‐represente d—an Asia heritage site and an agricultural landscape. This region is a Japanese case study that shares many planning and policy traditions with the West. It is the product of a long industrialised and developed nation, yet the site is quintessentially Asian with rice paddies and small villages sharing an ethos with the rest of this part of the world. It is an ethos that includes a philosophical and practical approach to this Japanese Continuing Landscape which dramatically diverges from conventional Western practices and challenges the accepted ideas of authenticity. It is an approach worthy of close scrutiny by those overseeing heritage landscapes in the rest of the world who may also be facing the uncomfortable clash of commerce and conservation.     

新农村建设中的农民权益保护问题

目前中国农村中存在的许多问题,在某种程度上都可以归结为农民权益保护问题。建设社会主义新农村,不仅要增进农民权益,也要防止以建设新农村的名义侵害农民已享有的权益。     

Where is Helvellyn? Fuzziness of multi-scale landscape morphometry

The landscape in which people live is made up of many features, which are named and have importance for cultural reasons. Prominent among these are the naming of upland features such as mountains, but mountains are an enigmatic phenomenon which do not bear precise and repeatable definition. They have a vague spatial extent, and recent research has modelled such classes as spatial fuzzy sets. We take a specifically multi-resolution approach to the definition of the fuzzy set membership of morphometric classes of landscape. We explore this idea with respect to the identification of culturally recognized landscape features of the English Lake District. Discussion focuses on peaks and passes, and the results show that the landscape elements identified in the analysis correspond to well-known landmarks included in a place name database for the area, although many more are found in the analysis than are named in the available database. Further analysis shows that a richer interrogation of the landscape can be achieved with Geographical Information Systems when using this method than using standard approaches.     

“Nameless landscapes” - what can be seen and understood on a battlefield?

Abstract

A battlefield—as a complex notion—encompasses many kinds of space, from the physical to the symbolic. The features of geographical elements together created the stage for a clash and conditioned in some way (partly or even entirely) the course and result of the battle. However, today’s battlefield landscape is often a literary silent witness to history, telling us nothing of the past. Given the fact that battlefields have become tourist attractions and are a destination not only to the so-called ‘dedicated cultural tourists’, there is a need to give the landscape a voice in the complex tourist narration. In order to enable including a historical landscape story in a general tourist narration about a battlefield, a theoretical framework of a historical battlefield is proposed and discussed to justify the need of using specific tourist facilities to make the past present in today’s landscape. The case of Rac?awice battlefield in Poland illustrates the ‘nameless landscape’ where only the symbolic space is readable and linked with the past. It also supports a conclusion that there is a need to make the battlefield legible in terms of the sequence of events, the roles of people (groups and individual), and the role of geographical features in the battle. In this simple condition, a visit to a battlefield might be more complex and provide a fuller understanding.     

Territoriality,social boundaries and ancestor veneration in the central Andes of Peru

This article examines the relationship between social boundaries, territoriality and ancestor veneration during the Late Intermediate Period (1000–1450 AD) in the Rapayán Valley of the Central Andes of Peru. Constructing upon recent theoretical work on social boundaries and territoriality combined with the analyses of early historical sources, I argue that the distribution of various types of above-ground mortuary structures across the landscape was a powerful mechanism of social control through space that not only served to assess territorial rights, but also to confine or exclude people from a bounded space by the delimitation of social boundaries. I sustain that above-ground mortuary structures reflected a growing concern for territorial behaviors during the LIP that allowed household members, kinship groups and/or political units, according to varying contexts, to draw social boundaries between insiders and outsiders by reifying identity and social solidarity through ancestors worship. Within the broader Andean context, I suggest that the widespread distribution of mortuary monuments across the landscape provided the political landscape with an ideology of fragmentation which encouraged the distinction between insiders and outsiders and thus promoted group identity through social exclusion from a geographical point of view at many different levels.     

Satellite Remote Sensing of Archaeological Vegetation Signatures in Coastal West Africa

This article discusses how archaeological sites in Sierra Leone, and by extension much of West Africa, can be identified through vegetation patterns (vegetation signatures) detectable in very high-resolution (VHR) multispectral satellite imagery. Settlement sites typically have a differing pattern of vegetation from the surrounding landscape, including concentrations of very large trees with sociocultural and historical significance: cotton (Ceiba pentandra) and baobab (Adansonia digitata). These features are conspicuous elements of the landscape both from the ground and in aerial imagery. Two complementary methods of using VHR multispectral satellite imagery are discussed in this paper: visual interpretation and semi-automated subpixel classification. These techniques are aiding ongoing archaeological survey of the Sierra Leone River Estuary. The impact of recently renewed industrial activity at a site of probable archaeological significance is also assessed through visually interpreted VHR satellite imagery.