New Perspectives on the Medieval ‘Agricultural Revolution’

An Open Access edition is available on the LUP and OAPEN websites.

Across Europe, the early medieval period saw the advent of new ways of cereal farming which fed the growth of towns, markets and populations, but also fuelled wealth disparities and the rise of lordship. These developments have sometimes been referred to as marking an ‘agricultural revolution’, yet the nature and timing of these critical changes remain subject to intense debate, despite more than a century of research.

The papers in this volume demonstrate how the combined application of cutting-edge scientific analyses, along with new theoretical models and challenges to conventional understandings, can reveal trajectories of agricultural development which, while complementary overall, do not indicate a single period of change involving the extension of arable, the introduction of the mouldboard plough, and regular crop rotation. Rather, these phenomena become evident at different times and in different places across England throughout the period, and rarely in an unambiguously ‘progressive’ fashion.
Presenting innovative bioarchaeological research from the ground-breaking Feeding Anglo-Saxon England project, along with fresh insights into ploughing technology, brewing, the nature of agricultural revolutions, and farming practices in Roman Britain and Carolingian Europe, this volume is a critical new contribution to environmental archaeology and medieval studies in England and beyond.

Contributors: Amy Bogaard; Hannah Caroe; Neil Faulkner; Emily Forster; Helena Hamerow; Matilda Holmes; Claus Kropp; Lisa Lodwick; Mark McKerracher; Nicolas Schroeder; Elizabeth Stroud; Tom Williamson.

'This collection of excellent papers also presents the initial results of the FeedSax project... By examining direct evidence from archaeological remains this work is an attempt to break the impasse regarding long debated questions on how, when, and why these transformations occurred.'

AgHR 72.I reviews

‘Overall, this volume is required reading for those interested in the rural economy and society of Anglo-Saxon England and north-west Europe. Importantly, its availability as an open-access edition will spread the results of this project to a broader audience.’
Benjamin Morton, Medieval Settlement Research

Helena Hamerow is Professor of Early Medieval Archaeology at the School of Archaeology, University of Oxford. Her many publications include Rural Settlements and Society in Anglo-Saxon England (OUP 2012) and with D. Hinton and S. Crawford (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology (OUP 2011). Mark McKerracher is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the School of Archaeology, University of Oxford. His publications include Anglo-Saxon Crops and Weeds: A Case Study in Quantitative Archaeobotany (Archaeopress 2019) and Farming Transformed in Anglo-Saxon England: Agriculture in the Long Eighth Century (Windgather Press 2018).

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