The day was divided into two halves, each comprising two sessions.  The first half (sessions 1 and 2) dealt with problems of ethnicity, and the impact of different peoples on the pattern of settlement. The second (sessions 3 and 4) focused on questions of colonisation, enclosure, and improvement.  At the end of these sessions a general discussion considered some common threads that had emerged.

Session 1. The early medieval period: the significance of migration on shaping the medieval landscape

In the first group of papers Nick Higham examined the problem of identifying different ethnic groups in the fifth and sixth centuries.  He emphasised the changes that were unrelated to migration, such as the collapse of the infrastructure of the Roman province, the new settlements such as in central Wroxeter and South Cadbury, and the fall in population at some time in the second half of the first millennium. He pointed out that while portable material culture (metalwork, etc.) tended to be continental, much of the architecture was insular – halls in particular. Even grubenhäuser had been recognised on late Romano-British sites. Distinctive German tripartite longhouses were not imported along with equal armed brooches, etc. The spread of a German language among people who were not of German origin remains an unsolved problem.

Dominic Powlesland believed that the best research tools were extensive excavation, aerial photography, and large-scale remote sensing (magnetometry, etc.). He distrusted results deriving from field walking and place names. Work in the vale of Pickering showed that the period between the fifth and ninth centuries AD was effectively a phase of prehistory. The land had been cleared in the Bronze Age, and intensively settled with Iron Age and Romano-British ladder-type settlements. Five large middle Saxon settlements with many halls and grubenhäuser were sited near to the ladder settlement. The cemetery was located near a still-visible prehistoric henge. Within the settlement, zones of housing, industry and crop processing were separate. The occupation in the fifth to ninth century was just as dense as in the late Roman period, so there was no evidence for a dip in population. There was no ‘shuffle’ in settlement (as postulated in other areas of England) because the medieval villages had grown from early settlements, though ridge and furrow from c. 900 extended over the former settlement sites. Many churches were already in existence in the vale villages, showing the antiquity of the settlements and the wealth of society. In his view settlement continued throughout prehistory and beyond, and he played down linguistic and cultural change. They may have thought of themselves as Deirans, but they were natives who had always been there.

Bob Higham, as discussant, congratulated the speakers on two provocative and interesting papers that had drawn substantially on original research and fieldwork.  For comparative purposes, evidence from the southwest was used to illuminate some themes of general interest.  The British and Anglo-Saxons who encountered each other in southwest Britain in the sixth and seventh centuries had been changed by the developments and cultural contacts since c. 400, with an already established history of mixing and integration.  It should also be recognised that immigration occurs within a regionally varied set of landscapes and economies.

Subsequent discussion focused on the complex sense of self-identity within Anglo-Saxon and British society.  This was not static but was transformed through the period in question.  Several participants said that the labels that people applied to themselves in this period – i.e. their sense of identity – was likely to be regional and tribal rather than ethnic.  With reference to North Yorkshire the importance of long-term continuity from the Iron Age into the early medieval period was stressed.  Commonalities in the material culture of Iron Age and Romano-British societies in several other regions were also emphasised. The northwest was also seen as distinctive, particularly on account of an extensive aceramic period.  Overall it was felt that our understanding of the landscape of the early medieval period is too often plagued by broad generalisation.  It is often more appropriate to understand the period in terms of its regional cultures.

Session 2. The later medieval period: ‘clashes of cultures’

Drawing on material from medieval Ireland, Kieran O’Conor argued that the castle/fortification was an important settlement form of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (the period of Anglo-Norman conquest). They were also very numerous, with 150 masonry castles, 500 earth and timber castles, and 60 ring works (at least), mostly built in the period 1169-1220. These were not just military strong points, but also seigneurial residences and centres of administration.  Another feature were large promontory forts which served as bases for armies. Irish/Gaelic traditions of fortification in the period were also examined.  There were numerous sites in the crannog, cashel, ring fort traditions, many of which continued in occupation into the twelfth century and beyond. In other words, although the Anglo-Norman fortifications were grander than the native forts, they were not totally different. The Anglo-Norman fashions influenced later developments among the native Irish, who built more elaborate and larger fortifications called cashlons.  Fortifications of all kinds served as a focus for more ordinary rural settlements, and had an important influence on the surrounding landscape.

Richard Oram addressed the myth about Scottish backwardness that was developed and spread by chroniclers and other writers in the middle ages. They depicted a ‘wet desert’ of inhospitable mountain and bog. They judged land by its capacity to grow corn, especially wheat. This tradition of viewing the native Scots as unproductive barbarians resembled the German view of the Slavs east of the Elbe. In the eyes of elite groups of outsiders, ignorance of technology, a lack of civilisation and moral inferiority all went together.  The transformation of Scotland was accomplished by David I in the twelfth century with the aid of an influx of Anglo-Norman aristocrats. Castles, towns, villages with extensive cornfields were all introduced, mainly in the east of the country.
 

However the imposition of this new organisation, as in Lauderdale, involved not the creation of a new countryside with sheep pastures, peat diggings, rig and furrow etc., but the reorganisation of an old, settled landscape. Elsewhere old settlements, such as crannogs persisted. The new settlements and society of the east were inappropriate in the areas where, for example, partible inheritance discouraged the growth of large compact estates and the construction of expensive castles as their administrative centres.  In the unreformed Scottish world cattle were reared and grazed, and that was an appropriate form of husbandry – we should not expect that growing corn was the only way to make land productive.

Oliver Creighton in discussion commended regarding castles as settlements and reminded participants of their key importance for reconstructing the Irish medieval landscape.  It was clear that perceptions of castles were not fixed but mutable and culturally determined; in both Ireland and Scotland castles meant different things in different societies.  There were deeply rooted cultural reasons as well as economic factors that explain the differences in scale and construction between Gaelic and ‘Anglo-Norman’ power centres.  He and others recommended the use of illustrative and literary sources, though like chronicles they reflected the propagandistic purpose of the authors.

The discussion broadened out to consider the role of medieval artistic and poetic material for our understanding the landscapes of the period.  While some participants felt that the biases inherent in these sources made their value in landscape studies questionable, others considered this material to have untapped potential for coming to grips with the medieval mindset and its conception of ‘landscape’. Other themes for discussion included comparisons between the creation of castle-dependant settlements in Britain and the incastellamento phenomenon in the Mediterranean, and the evidence for landscape reorganisation associated with Flemish colonising ventures in Scotland and Wales.

Session 3.  The colonization of uplands

With reference to medieval Cornwall, Peter Herring argued for continuity in the exploitation of the landscape since the Bronze Age, with enclosed fields around the farmsteads, and access to large common pastures. Territorial boundaries in the middle ages such as hundreds and parishes were designed to bring together the cultivable lowland where the enclosed fields were located and the open commons used for grazing.  You could analyse the use of land and attitudes towards it in terms of binaries such as ‘power and impotence’, ‘communal and private’, ‘safe and threatening’, ‘owned and held’. There was a shifting frontier between private and public in the landscape of Bodmin Moor, where at Brown Willy an open field worked by a hamlet was enclosed in the late thirteenth century and converted into three farms. This process of enclosure continued in subsequent centuries.

Bob Silvester complained about the omission of Wales from many surveys of rural settlement. There was a mass of evidence, but it did not always fit into the models derived from other parts of Britain. Hundreds of platforms, each representing a house or building, had been located and mapped over large parts of Wales, especially in northwest and central southern areas. They were grouped around areas of upland pasture, which contained useful resources such as fuel as well as grazing.  Was there population growth in Wales in the high middle ages?  You can find areas of ridge and furrow on hill slopes, suggesting the extension of cultivation that was later abandoned. But the hafods show that seasonal settlement of the hills persisted, with common pastures and communalism surviving without major enclosures until the sixteenth century.

Ian Whyte in discussion re-emphasised the rich, varied and complicated nature of upland landscapes, which have sometimes been viewed as poor and irrelevant by scholars from lowland backgrounds.  He raised the definition of colonisation, and in particular asked about the social composition of the colonisers – were they newcomers or local people expanding their holdings?  Were they impelled by population pressure or moves to expand their holdings? Models of upland colonisation are often outdated; in particular, the link between population pressure and upland colonisation is often viewed over-simplistically.

The discussion covered the nature of boundaries on unenclosed uplands.  Physical features such as cairn lines as well as natural watersheds were important.  Attention was drawn to the phenomenon of detached portions of parishes in many upland regions.  Transhumance was addressed.  Some participants emphasised the pragmatism of communities running seasonal settlements, with an assumption that people did not travel further than they had to; others drew attention to the underestimated social dimension to transhumance.  Attention was drawn to the gender dimension to transhumant activities in medieval and post-medieval Ireland.    Part-time industry could have been practiced by some upland colonisers.  Future studies could certainly pay greater attention to the social side of upland colonisation. 

Session 4. The colonization of wetlands

Mark Gardiner examined attitudes among modern scholars towards the wetlands, and in particular the rather negative attitude of Postan who saw the extension of settlement on to marginal land as a sign of desperation and of little lasting value. His field work in Norfolk and Romney Marsh showed the modification of salt marshes by provision of drove roads and digging of ditches, which made them more productive pastures. Embankment and reclamation came as a further stage. While some medieval writers like Felix, the biographer of Guthlac, regarded fens as threatening places, Henry of Huntingdon and other celebrated them as full of rich and abundant resources, with opportunities for hunting and fishing.

Steve Rippon reinforced the earlier point about the many uses and consequent value of wetlands. He reminded us of his earlier classification of policy towards wetlands – to exploit them in their ‘natural’ state; to modify them in the fashion outlined above; and to reclaim them and convert them to productive agricultural land. He showed that the last phase was being practised in the Somerset levels in the pre-Conquest period with the creation of oval enclosures adjacent to settlements with banks to exclude floodwater. Much attention has been given to the big co-ordinated large scale and high cost reclamation schemes of the great monasteries like Glastonbury, but in other parts of the levels much of the reclamation was small-scale and piecemeal, and if fit resulted in the colonisation of a large area this was not always intended and even accidental.

As discussant, Aidan O’Sullivan emphasised the important contribution that wetland archaeology could make to our understanding of past perceptions of, and attitudes to, the landscape.  He reminded us that the term ‘wetland’ was a relatively recent coinage and that coastal wetlands were storehouses of knowledge as well as resources for communities.  Their transformation by religious authorities and communities could have an important symbolic dimension, as exemplified by a famous medieval estate map of Inclesmoor, which is packed with Christian imagery.  Concepts used to good effect in studies of prehistoric landscapes, such as liminality, could be applied with good effect to the medieval period.

The broader discussion focused largely on the role of ecclesiastical authorities in the reclamation of wetlands.  Even if peasant communities were the driving forces behind wetland reclamation in some instances, then this still occurred within a framework of lordship.  The long timeframes over which monastic houses developed their estates was seen as critical to their influence in wetland zones, while other participants emphasised the symbolic dimension to this process.  In the Vale of Pickering and Witham Valley, ritual travel across sacred landscapes may be apparent in the form of causeways crossing wetland areas.  The symbolism of monasticism on the edges of wetland areas may also be apparent in the form of votive deposits.  The discussion also recognised the importance of oval enclosures as seminal features of landscape reorganisation; examples were identified in the Essex marshes, the edges of upland areas such as Dartmoor, and in the New Forest.

General discussion

The general discussion first focused on the importance of concepts of ethnicity to our understanding of landscape change as well as past perceptions of it. Surely changes in landscape and settlement were practical matters following an essentially agricultural agenda and different ethnic groups responded in similar ways to these economic priorities?  It was felt that differences were clear, and that varied forms of ‘ordinary’ rural settlements were associated with some of the high status fortified sites.  Contemporaries perceived ethnic and cultural differences and this affected the way in which they behaved.  Palaeoenvironmental evidence can be revealing in this context, sometimes demonstrating minimal changes in landscape management during periods of immigration.

Colonisation was closely connected with ideas of property, and the survival of common pastures, wetlands and uplands showed that the protection of communal interests sometimes prevailed against the onward march of individual claims for private land.  Individual interests – e.g. enclosure or drainage schemes – are apparent at an earlier date (pre 1300, even pre 1066) than is often thought. Perceptions varied and there were many opportunities for conflict when the ownership and control of commons could be disputed.  Differences in power did not deprive those of lower class the opportunity of improving land or taking it into more intense cultivation, as the case of the Somerset Levels shows.

The quality of land was a matter of perception as well as economic judgement. Land which is now seen as unproductive – fens, marshes, moorland, high hills – was regarded as a rich resource because it could provide raw materials, fuel, etc as well as grazing. Other benefits of wetland and upland exploitation were more unquantifiable, and in any cases certain upland areas in the medieval period appear not to have operated fully monetarised economies.  The high priority given to hunting gave uncultivated land a premium unrelated to the market value of the produce. The hierarchy of land quality varied, and their notion of improvement did not necessarily coincide with ours. Did people think of a landscape divided into individual plots as private property or as a communal asset sometimes subdivided?

Migration emerged as an issue in settlement studies – not just the wandering of peoples, as in fifth-century England or twelfth-century Ireland, but also the movement of individuals or small groups as an element in colonisation of new land. The continuities emphasised in the vale of Pickering or Cornwall or Wales implies a strong tendency of people to stay at home. Resisting migration could be as important an influence as moving.

Perhaps the role of migration in colonisation has been exaggerated. A lot of land was cleared, drained etc by existing nearby communities or their children and dependants. When people did move, then this is surely evidence for a desire for individual betterment? New farms were an improvement for the people moving into them as well as the land that they occupied.