British Archaeology, no 8, October 1995: Book reviews

THE MEDIEVAL HOUSES OF KENT
Sarah Pearson
RCHME, UKP19.95
ISBN 011-300047-2 pb

Anyone who has travelled through Kent will have been struck by the wealth of timber-framed houses surviving in the county. This rich architectural heritage had previously been studied only in a random fashion. However, from 1986 to 1992, the RCHME undertook a detailed survey of the medieval buildings in 60 parishes scattered through Kent. This book resulted from the survey and covers buildings up to 1545.

The aim was to identify the various kinds of houses and to assess patterns of date, size and distribution, and their possible connection with economic and historical events. This is a new approach: in the past, social and economic historians and students of architectural history have worked along parallel tracks without any link between them.

Sarah Pearson presents the detailed results in a readable fashion, and the book is clearly illustrated with scale drawings and photographs. I was amused by her references to the lack of decoration and the `plain taste of the people of Kent'. She should visit the rural parishes to the west of Horsham in West Sussex where every crown-post is plain and there is hardly a dais beam to be seen. Compared with those in this part of Sussex, Kentish houses appear lavishly-decorated objects of wonder!

This difference highlights the distinct styles of timber-framed houses in different parts of the country; and Pearson has been able to demonstrate regional differences even within Kent itself. The variation in type and size of houses from one area to another is related to the status of the owners; and the survival of the buildings appears dependent on the presence or absence of marked social and economic stratification within an area. These findings will influence all future studies of timber-framed buildings.

Diana Chatwin is a member of the Wealden Buildings Study Group, and is writing a book on the timber-framed buildings of Rudgwick, W Sussex

THE CELTIC WORLD
ed Miranda Green
Routledge, UKP130.00
ISBN 0-415-05764-7 hb

The Celtic world is a subject which has seen an avalanche of publications in recent years, yet which will now gladly, I am sure, find room for another. This is a marvellous book, to which 41 established scholars have contributed their work.

The period covered by this 840-page book is 600BC to AD600. Eight parts, each with two to four contributions, address major themes: origins, warfare, society, settlements and environment, economy, industry, arts and religion. Most focus on La TŠne Europe, although some are more or wholly concerned with Britain. Burnham's pivotal review of recent ideas about Roman Britain links the book's chronological span, and provokes us to think further about how to redress the balance between things Roman (or imagined to be Roman) and things British. Could a similarly less Romano-centric view help us to understand better some of the Empire's other `natives'? Northover and Manning give us rare overviews of metalworking technology, so often neglected while we delight in the metalwork's decoration, and leave us wanting to find more production centres and mines. We know something about boats (McGrail), but land transport is much more difficult to assess. Readers may have quibbles about omissions or biases, but it was probably better to let authors follow their own interests than to impose stifling editorial requirements.

Part 9 initiates a new regional direction, with summaries of selected areas of continental Europe. Frey summarizes Italy, a key area if we believe that interaction here introduced Mediterranean ideas into the north, and Lernez-de Wilde deals with Spain - both probably less familiar to British readers than France, Germany or even eastern Europe. Parts 10-12 deal with the Roman and later periods - even today's `Celts' get a look in. This is a fine book, a mine of information and references, and a worthy companion to Moscati's The Celts which accompanied the great Venice exhibition of 1991.

Jeffrey May is a Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Nottingham

THE MEDIEVAL LANDSCAPE OF WESSEX
eds Michael Aston and Carenza Lewis
Oxbow, UKP28.00
ISBN 0-946897-78-6 hb

What is medieval Wessex without Alfred? This book's answer is the countryside which, despite over 500 years of subsequent change, can still be traced in the hamlets, villages, fields and market towns of Dorset, Hampshire, Somerset and Wiltshire.

The first three articles in this book consider the whole region in terms of its social, economic and religious development. The perspective then narrows with essays covering particular topics, such as artificially created landscapes, like forests; or how late Saxon documented boundaries can inform about land use; or how surviving bits of the medieval countryside can be conserved and presented. Reviews of settlements in the Wessex counties, however, form the bulk of the book. Do not expect any comprehensive or easy solutions here - the study of medieval Wessex is still in its infancy - but some interesting ideas have come from applying techniques used elsewhere in England.

We are now used to the idea that most of medieval England was dotted with farmsteads and hamlets, and that villages were a minority and confined to particular regions. This view is too simplistic for most of Wessex, where dispersed and nucleated settlements existed side by side. Indeed, the suggestion is that in some (as yet unknown) circumstances, hamlets could grow or coalesce into villages, only later to refragment into another dispersed pattern.

One of the leitmotifs of the book is `continuity', of land use, land allotment and settlement pattern, from at least the late Roman to late medieval periods; and religious continuity, which links the sub-Roman to the later West Saxon church. There were, however, periods of pronounced change: the contributors favour the 10th century for a major phase of land re-allocation and a new settlement pattern, strongly indicated by the new parish churches and villages with associated field systems. It was also a time of intense land reclamation, spearheaded by monasteries. The contributors also see the 14th century, with its profound demographic changes, as a period which accelerated the tendency for settlements to fragment and shrink.

Dr Grenville Astill is a Reader in Archaeology at the University of Reading