The shifting balance of hunting forest, transhumance, pasture and outfield in medieval and post-medieval Aberdeenshire

Piers Dixon

This paper is based on systematic archaeological fieldwork in Aberdeenshire by RCAHMS, documentary research by the author and John Harrison, and palaeoenvironmental work by Althea Davies and Richard Tipping. The author attempts to integrate the results of the work by the various disciplines to improve our understanding of the changing pattern of land-use and settlement in Donside and the upper Dee in the late and post medieval periods. In doing so some surprising results have emerged in relation to the changing balance of settlement, transhumance and hunting forests and the role of outfield and crofts in this process.

 

Medieval landscapes in Devon: regions and perceptions

Sam Turner

In this paper I will use data collected for the recently-completed Devon HLC project in combination with archaeological and other sources to try and examine the distribution of medieval landscape resources (e.g. arable land, woodland, rough grazing ground) and the shaping of landscape regions in medieval Devon. In addition, I will attempt to address the ways medieval people perceived different landscape zones, and how these perceptions influenced the ways they used and shaped their environments.

 

A fragment of medieval landscape near Strata Florida, Ceredigion

Andrew Fleming

The Cistercian Abbey of Strata Florida owned a large tract of land in the nearby hills. Good preservation conditions have facilitated the recording and study (with Louise Barker of RCAHMW) of a range of features documenting to the monastic exploitation of this area and the nature of tenant farms within the ‘home grange’ of Penardd.     

 

Just some huts in the hills? Shielings and upland pasture on Ben Lawers, Perthshire

Steve Boyle

A continuing problem with archaeological and historical studies of shielings and the exploitation of upland wastes in highland Scotland has been a marked failure to integrate documentary sources with field evidence. With only a few exceptions, historians and archaeologists have paid little more than lip service to each others’ research, reaching across the divide only when necessary to illustrate a point, or to reinforce a particular argument. Part of the problem has been that areas with an abundance of well-preserved archaeological remains often do not have a matching quantity or quality of historical documents. On Ben Lawers there is no such excuse, and the recent Ben Lawers Historic Landscape Project has attempted to find an inter-disciplinary approach to analysing the landscape, involving historians, archaeologists and paleo-environmentalists. Marrying the different sets of data, however, has inevitably proved far from easy, and often uncomfortable. This paper will look at some of the gains we have made in our understanding of the land beyond the head-dyke, and will reflect on some of the problems thrown up by an inter-disciplinary approach.

 

Unravelling environmental and socio-economic drivers behind medieval upland land-use

Althea L. Davies

Thinking on past upland agricultural dynamics has been dominated by environmentally deterministic models, both in prehistory and in medieval times, notably during the ‘Little Ice Age’. By contrast, documentary evidence indicates the extent to which socio-economic incentives shaped upland land-use during the historical period. This suggests that approaches which focus on either environment or socio-economics alone may be inadequate for understanding the dynamics of medieval land-use.

This paper will use a palaeoecological (pollen-based) perspective to examine (1) the character and dynamics of medieval upland land-use and (2) our current understanding on the extent to which environment and/or socio-economic helped determine these patterns. This will involve case studies from the Scottish Highlands (north-west and north-east), and the Borders, covering the period circa AD 1200-1600. The data are used to highlight current limitations in knowledge, particularly regarding interactions between climate change, upland ecology and resource management, and agricultural and socio-economic developments, and the potential benefits of more collaborative palaeoenvironmental and historical work.

 

Reconstructing medieval woodland – linking resource access to vegetation character

Philip Sansum

The native ecological character of woodland vegetation determines its potential as a resource and the ways in which it can be used and accessed. Equally, long-term exploitation may modify the character of that vegetation (and hence landscape character too) both by purposeful manipulation and unforeseen or undesired outcomes of use. The paper explores, through data from a study area on Lochaweside, Lorn, Argyll, this circular relationship defining the nature of woodland resources. Describing an historical resource’s ecological character and the key anthropogenic changes to it may inform efforts to understand the perceptions of its users. Such a description is attempted, and the question of the sustainability of access to woods in the period c.1000to c.1700 AD in the study area is raised.

 

Townships and managing forest resource in sixteenth-century Strathavon (Banffshire)

Alasdair Ross

Very little is currently known (at least in historical terms) about both timber resource and timber usage in relation to the construction and maintenance of townships in Scotland. The documents upon which this presentation is based (dated c.1590) have been known about for some time, as some of the architectural information in them was utilised in the construction of the Highland village at Raits in Badenoch. This, however, is the first occasion that all of the information in these documents has been assessed and collated in relation to land division and timber resource.

The two documents in question were the product of long-running accusations and a court case between Sir Alexander Gordon of Strathavon and Sir James Grant of Freuchie. Essentially, since the 1570s Gordon had accused and cited Grant in the court of session for decimating the forest of Strathavon by taking far too many trees to maintain the buildings in the townships and shielings of Strathavon that Grant held by charter from the marquis of Huntly.

In order to refute these accusations, Grant of Freuchie surveyed all of the different types and sizes of the structures in his Strathavon townships, together with anything else made from wood, and listed exactly how many trees his tenants required either every year or every two years to maintain their lifestyles. This means that not only can we build an accurate picture of the different buildings that comprised each township during the last decade of the sixteenth century but we can also relate these results to the different units of land assessment present in the lordship of Strathavon at that time.

PS: Sir James Grant of Freuchy sucessfully defended the court case.

 

From Forest to Common: changing perceptions of moorland and fell in medieval northern England

Angus J L Winchester

Much of upland Britain was termed ‘forest’ or ‘chase’ in the high middle ages, suggesting that the uplands had a distinct status as royal or private hunting ground.  Some areas, notably but not exclusively royal forests, remained actively managed for game; in most, little more than the name survived to preserve a memory of hunting, while the valleys of the forest or chase were transformed into demesne livestock-rearing farms, or opened to peasant colonisation, both of which exploited the pastures on the surrounding hills.  By the 16th century, the hill wastes were managed for practical purposes as manorial waste, the hill-farming communities exercising common rights on the former forest wastes.

The change involved a change in legal status.  It was often accompanied by a closer definition of boundaries, assigning areas of waste to individual settlements within the former forest.  Legacies of forest status sometimes survived in local customary dues and regulations; conflict sometimes persisted between the interests of the lord’s game and the tenants’ livestock.