The Commercial Village, High Medieval Europe, 900-1300AD. A comparative study of village development across the UK, Netherlands, Poland and Czech Republic.  James Henderson

(1)

The Commercial Village, High Medieval Europe,

900-1300AD.

A comparative study of village development across the UK, Netherlands, Poland and

Czech Republic.

James Henderson

UvA Ma Archaeology - Landscape and Heritage 12584347 - jhn627

31st August 2020

 

Cottenham, 1850 (ILN, after Ravensdale 1974)

Warnsveld, 1743 (Jan de Beijer, after Verspay et al. 2018)

Kleczanów, c 1775 (Mirowski 2011) Mstěnice, c 1450 (Heřmana, 2020)

(2)

Summary

In support of the Community Archaeology in Rural Environments (CARE MSoC EEA 2019)

project, this research set out to add to the understanding of village development within

each participating country (UK, Netherlands, Poland and Czech Republic). The state of

knowledge was addressed first in order to highlight the most productive method, that

might promote the opportunities for CARE and maximise any outcomes within the study

restrictions. The study proceeded at the local level with the selection of a single village

from each country that met the requisite level of existing and accessible

historical-geographical and archaeological evidence. By framing each village within the commercial

led development perspective, the emergence (continuity) and transformation

(discontinuity) of case studies could be balanced against three alternative motivating

factors. European cross comparison of the case studies resulted in some unexpectedly

common themes against such variant context. Commerce was not identified as the sole

factor for village development, however the challenges revealed provoke new avenues,

which the CARE project and future research might explore. 

(4)

1. Introduction

The most dominant living landscapes of Europe originate from the high medieval period, typified by the essential image of the village. Pre-Medieval settlements are still glimpsed in their original form and on occasion an underlying influence on later spatial organisation can be evidenced, however they do not exist above ground in the same frequency as those of Medieval origin. Subsequent layers of spatial organisation and the built environment are of course what we experience around us every day, but at the foundation, more often than not are the changes wrought between 950-1300AD. The substantial physical impact on the landscape is matched only by the significant social and economic organisations of Europe. Aspects of power and ownership were fixed in these years that continue to divide, identify and incite conflict in the modern world. For a period so integral to understanding the European past, and so intensively studied by several disciplines, our understanding of the source and stimulants are still limited. This study will

approach the high medieval village once more, searching for an underlying commercialisation to the crystallisation and transformation of the landscape.

For the inquirer, high medieval Europe lies at the most precarious cross section; between the written interpretable record, observable spatial arrangements and the remains of features and material. This overlap has driven the forefront of research together into the maturing

interdisciplinary Landscape Archaeology; within which geography centric approaches (Meitzen 1895, Roberts 2002) and cultural historical views (Marx 1872, Fossier 1999) are amalgamated with the ever growing archaeological record (Aston 1994, Verspay et al. 2018). The vast literature on the development of medieval village settlement is best simplified into four distinct perspectives: power and coercion, communalism, field systems and commercialisation (Curtis 2013). The

opposition of vertical or horizontal power relations can be explained in a more straightforward way as either lords or peasants acting as the ‘agents of change’ that concentrated settlement into village form. Alongside the debated creators of the medieval village, resource based field system explanations and the central market place commercialisation view have also been proposed. Both seek to identify the wider demographic and economic preconditions that dictated the emergence of villages. These themes have each held primacy within cycles of research since the 19th century and continue to be recognised in the most fundamental political divides of modern society (Marx 1872, Bloch 1931, Darby 1973). The search for a commercial village is very firmly rooted in a single perspective, however a balanced investigation of all alternatives views will be attempted.

When historical perspectives have been applied to archaeological research they have often been limited by over a century of embedded bias derived from nationalist origin building, incongruity of scale, esoteric scholarship and the incomplete record. In spite of these significant challenges research in the two decades following the inaugural Ruralia Conference (1996) and the European Landscape Convention (2000) scholars in the UK, Netherlands, Poland and Czech Republic have shown an ever increasing pursuit of interdisciplinary call to action for national synthesis of

medieval rural settlement research (Christie and Stamper 2010, Verspay et al. 2018, Buko 2007, Klápště 2012). Amongst this convergence of academic cohesion and focus, a re-evaluation of embedded national study has begun to emerge that has improved our understanding of the processes that crystallised the medieval landscape. In a comparative infancy is the further step towards synthesis of an integrated pan European picture, which RURALIA (I-XII 1995-2019) has strived for by facilitating ‘the exchange of knowledge and comparable studies’. One such project

(5)

within a European research framework is the Community Archaeology in Rural Environments (CARE MSoC EEA 2019); an initiative across four universities and the cross section of four chosen countries that this study replicates. Alongside CARE’s conceptual goals for a new participatory archaeology and testable wellbeing outcomes, the project aims to ‘throw new light’ on the long-term development of medieval villages. To complement the aims of the CARE project it is hoped that by investigating a village from each participating country this work might provide a

comparative basis for which the larger scale investigation might proceed. At the core of CARE, carried forward here, is a real desire to uncover the most extraordinary origins and transformative moments, in the often disregarded ‘ordinary’ environments of the humble village.

1.1 Aims

The main aim of this thesis will be to understand how the local development of four villages, situated in separate countries and contexts across Europe, fits with the wider theory of commercially led medieval village development. In order to achieve this outcome, several questions must be approached to address smaller aims:

-

Which explanations have been used to understand village development in high medieval Europe, within and across disciplinary boundaries? How have historiographical and political developments shaped frameworks of interpretation in each country?

The aim of chapter two will be to follow the disciplinary and historiographical evolution of

medieval settlement study, and provide a basis upon which the current interpretative frameworks can be outlined.

-

How well do European frameworks & concepts fit the national experience of each country of study? Can a shared village definition or the wider theory of commercially led village

development be identified?

Chapter three aims to define the village, categorise four contemporary explanations of medieval village development, and highlight the expected national diﬀerences. Chapter 4 will set out the case study methodology and outline the limitations that will restrict the outcomes of the following chapters.

-

Can the archaeological evidence of (dis)continuity in each medieval village be identified and accurately dated to establish commercial causation? Do the comparative observations from the four case study villages match the expected growth and transformation of the interpretative framework?

Chapters five through eight aim to provide a detailed evaluation of the dominant explanatory factor behind each stage of village development. The findings of the case studies will be compared and contrasted within Chapter 9 to bring about a balanced assessment of the commercial village and whether it holds an expected weight in the process of development.

(6)

2. Disciplinary Perspectives

The study of medieval settlement has been approached from several divided academic disciplines and at times, overlapping justification is crucial to provide a weight of evidence. The spectrum of research moves from the scientific interpretations of natural sciences, geology and geography, towards the cultural interpretations of archaeology, economic and social history. Each of these disciplines have emerged and developed separately within the diﬀerent academic traditions of each country, at times varying regionally within university led schools of thought. These esoteric episodes have hindered international synthesis and provided conflicting focus and interpretation. ‘The holy grail remains true interdisciplinary, where separate scholarly agenda of historians, geographers, archaeologists, onomasts and others can be combined together on an equal footing’ (Jones and Hooke 2010, 42).

2.1 Geography

Geography, or more specifically historical geography, must be credited with the earliest and most influential research focused on the medieval village. The majority of geographical approaches to village formation and particularly the related field systems can be traced to the influential works of the German scholar Meitzen (1895) in the late nineteenth century on the morphogenesis of

villages. Frederick Seebohm (1892) and Paul Vinogradof (1892) were two of the early propagators of this methodological approach, which would spread to connected European schools of thought. Howard Levi Gray (1915) an American scholar, is largely credited with Anglicising and

disseminating these works to the UK. In the interwar period British historical geography would evolve into a true discipline with HC Darby (1936) setting the tone of the developing ‘new

geography’ to come in the post war period. This geographical perspective would be mirrored by ‘new archaeology’ in its scientific version 2010) with the completion of Darby’s (1977) general survey of the whole country, giving way to the greater emphasis on archaeology led insights, approached with statistical and quantifiable methodology. UK historical geography would ‘reach its high point in the 1970s’ (Dyer and Everson 2010, 13)

In Germany’s western neighbouring country of the Netherlands geographical proximity fostered a lasting connection with early German school of morphology. ’German work on settlement

morphology was still basic reading for Dutch students in … the 1970s’, which uniquely in the Netherlands developed, amongst the scientific post war agenda, into a sub-discipline focused on soil classification ‘on the brink of physical determinism’ (Renes 2010, 46). Archaeological

approaches to medieval settlement would similarly become more prevalent in the final decades of the 20th century; however, the ability to read back through the ownership record of land parcels in the majority of Netherlands render contemporary study far more accurate than in the UK, where later enclosure processes have obscured the village and field relationship (Renes 2010). Since the turn of the millennium Dutch led research has driven forward a fresh interdisciplinary work,

inclusive of geography and some of the more scientific strains such as planning and ecology to integrate medieval settlement into European landscape and heritage perspectives, with the landscape biography approach (Kolen et al. 2015).

To the east of Germany, Polish research similarly picked up on the early morphological tradition, first with regional approaches (Dobrowolski 1928, Leszczycki 1932,1936, Piaścik 1939), then on a

(7)

national scale with influential historical geographical work of Bogdan Zaborski (1926). Post war Polish research would develop the ideas of morphogenesis with greater emphasis on ethnography and greater consideration of cultural context with regional works (Kiełczewska-Zaleska 1965, Szulc 1983) and on the supra-regional scale (Burszta 1958, Tkocz 1998). Despite this shift towards a more cultural perspective, Figlus (2018, 161) finds, in a comprehensive overview of Polish literature, that ‘there is a pressing need for verification of the geographical-historical research so far, and contrasting it with the current toponomastic and archaeological studies based on modern absolute dating methods’, also recognising a need for future ‘interdisciplinary teamwork aimed at integration of the body of knowledge’.

In c

ontrast to Poland’s rich historiogeographic studies, a later and less enthusiastic adoption might be postulated for Czech studies of Říkovský (1939) and Proufus (1947). Much earlier work on medieval settlement was based ‘exclusively on written medieval sources’ due to the divided ‘opinion polemics, ideologically and nationalistically sharpened’(Čapek and Holata 2017, 274). Morphology was used as the evidence to support theories of German colonisation (Ostsiedlung), which were more strongly opposed in the Czech Republic in favour of internal Slavic continuation theories (Novotný 1915). This underlying conflict with German colonisation theories would

continue onto the post war period as historical geographical work was often initiated in direct opposition to founding morphological work of Meitzen (1895). Marxist historical interpretations and the impact of local history (Hoskins 1955) approach from the UK, would largely dictate the direction away from geographical focus in the 1960s and 1970s, although Štěpánek’s (1967) positivist works would parallel the pinnacle of ‘new geography’ seen in other countries.

Archaeology would take the lead early on with medieval settlement research, but develop in an esoteric direction with little outside influence and focusing on national issues, rather than being involved in a wider European debate. In the 1990s Czech academia opened up considerably and has shifted towards the European landscape perspective. In order to reintegrate historical

geographical studies in the landscape perspectives Kuna and Dreslerová (2007, 176) suggest that an ‘overreaching approach to multiple scale of analysis from site to region is necessary.’

2.2 Historical Approaches

Social historical works represent perhaps the highest degree of national specialisation of any discipline of study, largely because the medieval narratives are central to the early modern nation building bias and framing as a ‘period of origin’ for 20th century states. Some of the earliest historians to address anything other than the royal lineages and directives would focus intensively on deciphering the legal codes and census data that remained as primary sources from the period. In the UK, the early works of Maitland (1901), were influential in investigating the legal relationships outlined in medieval census of the Domesday book outlining the ‘feudal’ system. Huizinga (1919) produces a similarly seminal (although often criticised, Peters et al. 1999) cultural historical work for the low countries, with Freidrich (1904) compiling the Codex chronicle in a Czech context. Pleszczyński (2011) outlines the diﬃculties facing Polish historians interpreting largely narrative sources often from non-Polish perspectives. These early framings of states, legal codes, duties and particularly the implicit or explicit class relations, ultimately have dictated scholarly debates up to present day. Post-war historical works transition in the ‘histoire totale’ direction of the French Annales school, instigated by Marc Bloch (1931). Bloch’s desire to marry the scientific and narrative historical approaches, recognise the influence of related disciplines

(8)

and specify a new long term perspective, would be cemented and propagated by a new

generation of historians, amongst them was Fernand Braudel (1902–1985). Braudel (1973) would provide the most widely recognised work, particularly for its relevance to wider spatial or temporal study, with the methodological structure of short-term ‘événements’, medium-term ‘conjunctures’, and long term ‘longue durée’. Despite the significant widening perspective of these major works and great steps toward comparative history, entrenched national perspectives, periods of politically motivated academic disconnection and barriers through linguistic and terminological detachment have meant that pan European or global scale Medieval historical works have only recently begun to appear within the last two decades (Wickham 2016). Holmes and Standen (2015, 1) suggest that the marginalisation of global perspectives in the middle ages derive from three factors; the falsehood that truly global history only began with early modern maritime exploration, an unstated assumption of the essential backwardness of the middle ages and post-colonial anxieties of a Eurocentric view of ‘anything called global’.

The contributions of toponomastics or place name study should also be considered, as a more empirical social historical approach to understanding medieval settlements. The simplest form of onomastics is the reasoning that the origin of name can provide insight into the cultural influence that nouns were created within, places in the toponomastic sense. When combined with dating of origins, often reliant on other disciplines, and tracing through time to evidence continuity,

onomastics can give insights that are useful in their comparison. As with much linguistic debate, place name evidence has been misused in combination with geographical work to assign

simplistic mapping of cultural historical categorisation, and therefore must be considered with caution. In European discourse the delineation of Norse, Germanic, Slavic, Latin and Celtic language origins dominate and reflect their influence on cultural interpretations by name. Despite these dangers, the comparative value of toponomastics has proved valuable at the larger

landscape scales, and deeper investigation of relation to environmental factors has been

particularly valuable. Toponomastic lines of inquiry have been pursued across all the countries of consideration, with influential work from Margaret Gelling in the UK (1953, 1988), Hendrik

Moerman in the Netherlands (1956), Mieczysław Buczyński in Poland (1966), Šmilauer (1960) in the Czech Republic. The collection of these works in the post war period illustrates once more the cyclical balance of natural and cultural perspectives.

Any historiographical discussion of economic history might begin with Karl Marx (1872) and the particularly prevalent use of his framework in all the countries of consideration, notably those in the Soviet bloc for the post war mass reorganisation of rural landscapes. Marxist interpretation of the middle ages largely holds that the key driver for change was the struggle by the peasant class for emancipation, a view that reemerged in economic history with the Brenner Debate in the 1970s (Brenner 1976). On the opposite side of the debate were those who adhered to the

classical Ricardian and Malthusian population and resource model, which holds that demography commanded growth and collapse (Postan 1973). Some of the concepts of Adam Smith’s (1776) free market principle lie at the root of final of the three ‘supermodels’ that Hatcher and Bailey (2001) analyse in a comprehensive overview of economic applications to the middle ages. In many ways the medieval period is the foundation of all economic theory, but its infancy is obvious in the lack of reliable data, leaving most hypotheses untested. Economic and social historical

frameworks have of course developed contemporaneously, however the more positivist leanings of economic work found greater alignment with the post war peak of ‘New Geography’ and ‘New

(9)

certainly in this instance biases the national mix of disciplinary work in the period. Maurice Beresford perhaps exemplifies best the convergence of perspectives drawn from economic history towards a new cross disciplinary approach, and alongside John Hurst at Wharram Percy (1972) shifted the focus of medieval settlement research towards the Archeological point of view.

2.3 Archaeology

Archaeological approaches to the medieval period were the first addressed at the turn of the 20th century, with the preceding 19th century antiquarian traditions most often aimed at the treasures of the classical world. The culture-historical approaches that followed would be focused on the broad classification of material into cultural groups. Much of the discussion around medieval cultural groups would be with regard to defining the boundaries of the now completely refuted ethnic typology, such as Kossina’s (1911) Kulturkreis. Some of these sketches of early medieval Europe would be adopted by racist politics, the echoes of which persist in the inability of terminology to develop away from these cultural categories. Archaeology in these periods was almost exclusively conducted on site scale and forced into simplistic migratory models that emphasised and often solely considered conflict as the means of socio-economic shifts. There is a real convergence across all the countries and disciplines of study in the early approaches of academia to implant the philosophy and politics of the classical world on national origins. With a modern view this can so easily be understood as a means of cementing institutions of power and often used to incite imperial conflict and as propaganda to justify the violence of the early 20th century. In the UK and Netherlands these positions in their extreme projected the historical narrative of Christian warrior kings, Charlemagne’s Francia, and Alfred’s Wessex, pitted against the Pagan Celts and Vikings. In the east, states drew out the reverse of this situation with the works such Józef Kostrzewski (1923) set out to refute the Charlemagne’s ‘civilising’ influence and confirm that Poland was the home of the egalitarian Slavs. Czech archaeology similarly was fixed on carving out national identity by supported the righteous ‘Slav’ narrative that would iconicise Wenceslaus and Jan Hus (Bretholz 1912)

Post-WWII archaeology brings the first attempts to escape these overbearing narratives and evaluate the social sciences alongside the cultural deliberations of history, with a fresh interest in rural contexts. Hoskins (1955) ‘making of the English landscape’ was perhaps unrecognised as an archaeological work, however it pioneered non invasive evidence and would come to define the local historical approach, which attempts a merger of the environmental and the individual in recognition of the palimpsest. Hoskins’ methodology has been dismissed by some as a

monograph of reactionary conservatism, but in retrospect it has clearly enabled many to research the landscape free from the myopia of singular disciplines. The impact of war time aerial

photography surveys would also serve to ‘broaden the lens’, in the discovery of a wealth of deserted medieval villages (DMV) in the UK. Beresford and Hurst’s (1972) long running Wharram Percy excavations were influential, as shown by the emulation of their approach in other

countries. The Czech Republic in particular would similarly begin a strong period of exploration on deserted medieval villages, such as at Svidna (Smetánka 1988). The work and charting of DMVs would coincide with the new geography movements empirical tests of the early ideas around the the concentration of villages. The parallels between DMV Archaeology in the midland or central zone area of England and the geographical distribution of open field systems would become a central concept for Darby (1973) and remains relevant up to the Historic Landscape

(10)

geographical and historical methods to approach larger scales, led to creation of ‘landscape archaeology’ in the UK.

In the Netherlands DMVs were also an area of focus; however aerial photography was not prevalent until the 1970s. Here Landscape Archaeology was not fully adopted, instead a

pioneering large scale excavation technic was developed, which in many ways tackled the same problem of scale with diﬀerent methods (Renes 2010). The diﬀerence in early geographical traditions underpinned these divergent responses. Similarly between the 2 countries there was a great deal of regional specialisation and in the most part regions focused on mapping

developments accurately without greater synthesis with national or European frameworks.

Czech post war excavation was typified by large scale investigation of early medieval central places, strongholds or trade centres, which are often characterised as ‘Slavic Archaeology’ in recognition of its underlying focus on exploring and emphasising the development of Slavic culture. The underlying motives of connection across the Eastern bloc and as political fuel for the furthering establishment of Marxist views are clear. From the late 1950s and 1960s Czech

archaeology, in a brief period of ‘liberation’, a distinct medieval school would develop, ‘the impulse for study would derive from the study of deserted medieval villages in England’ (Čapek and Holata 2017). Smetánka (1988) is largely credited with the establishment and growth of rural medieval research, which throughout the 1970s and 1980s would develop a rich tradition of regional survey and consider more cross disciplinary approaches. Despite these similarities with Western European approaches the insular nature of Czech work, often also split between Moravia and Bohemia, would result in conceptual divergence. Best illustrated by Kuna and Dreslerová’s (2007) explanation of semiotic shift of landscape and ‘community areas’.

Polish post-war Archaeology experienced a ‘radical change in methodology unwanted by the scientific milieu and connected with the necessity to adapt science to the needs of the new, Marxist ideology’ (Buko 2007, 12). From the fifties onwards medieval archaeology experienced a rapid development away from simplified interpretational patterns, towards increasing scale and scope, on regional or micro regional scale. Despite the now large body of work and thoroughly established field, the focus of work rarely strayed far from the contentious debate on Slavic ‘home land’, and investigation into strongholds (Tabaczynski 1987). In this respect archaeology in a rural context on a national scale has seen sparse attention, left mainly as the preserve of a dominant geographical and environmental perspective. Integration with historical works similarly has been rarely approached and is exemplified by the periodisation of early medieval as 7th to the mid 13th century rather than earlier 11th century of other countries.

The paradigmatic shift of archaeology towards the post processual perspective of the 1990s found root in North America and the UK, with the reaction to earlier scientific statistical

approaches. The increased leaning towards cultural theoretical movement would lead to friction particularly between perspectives from cultural geography and traditional empirical landscape archaeology, exemplified by the ‘don’t bin your boots’ debate between Fleming and Johnson (2007). Whilst the recognition of intrinsic bias and new interpretative methodologies influenced the wider discipline, in many ways the accompanying shift towards marginalised archaeologies had the greatest impact of renewed interest in medieval rural settlement. European institutional

directives in Valetta (1992) and the European landscape convention (2000) have certainly forced all four countries of study to address the landscape scale and recognise the limitations that hinder

(11)

European level synthesis (Olwig 2007). The research approach of this thesis is founded within these ideas, in order to use marginalised rural archaeology to bring together the disconnected worlds. Rather than outline the specific regional and national approaches of each country within the last two decades it seems more appropriate to explore the interdisciplinary frameworks and look for the supporting evidence for broad explanations that have attempted to forge unity across disciplinary and geographic borders.

The outlined progressions of disciplinary perspectives towards the medieval village are far from comprehensive, however they do illustrate the vastly separate viewpoints that affect both the propositions and the outcomes of research. Even amongst the geographical or cultural commonalities, research has taken very diﬀerent paths. In Poland and the Czech Republic amongst a great deal of parallel questions we find: diﬀerences in scale, periodisation, a direction of study (deserted medieval village research). Despite the recent trend towards unity it is clear that Medieval village research has been moulded by the political conflicts of the 20th century. However implicit (English dominate UK perspectives) or explicit (Czech and Polish opposition to German scholarship) research still has a long way to go to surmount longstanding convictions and find objectivity. A complete approach to European interpretative framework therefore must incorporate former perspectives whilst allowing space for the fresh interdisciplinary, archaeology led

approaches.

3. Historical Frameworks

The primary explanatory factor for medieval village development is the most contested principle on which past research has shifted and therefore provides the best opportunity to structure analysis. Curtis (2013) sets out four distinct frameworks for interpretation, grouped around

explanatory factors: power and coercion, communalism, field systems and resource management and commercialisation. It should be noted that these frameworks of interpretation share much crossover and it is rare that any approach considers one of the others perspectives completely unimportant. Variations of this framework has been followed by further studies due the ease of comparison across variant environmental and socio-economic contexts, such as the synthesis of the Netherlands by Verspay et al. (2018). The consideration of commercialisation within the

framework provides a good way to evaluate the weight of the commercial village and will therefore be similarly utilised within this study. Before approaching a detailed outline of each explanatory perspective and the relevance within each country of study, it is necessary to comprehensively define a village in the high medieval period.

3.1 Village Definition

The challenge of defining a village is that strict definitions are static and the landscape is dynamic. Villages are both physical and intangible social constructs that must reflect relative demographic shifts. At the most basic physical definition, a village is defined by size and concentration, in that it is not a larger town, or a smaller hamlet, farmstead, or lone house. When arbitrary figures are set to define these boundaries there are more often than not immediately challenged, although

sketches of size to aid interpretation are necessary. Twenty or more family homesteads connected in some way is the cut oﬀ that Taylor (1983, 15) proposes to distinguish from the hamlet of three

(12)

to nineteen families for his study in the UK. Dutch studies have suggested a minimum 150 metre distance between individual structures to define clustering and allude to the communication necessary for social villages, but also settle on the figure of ten to twenty houses as the dividing line between hamlet and village (Haartsen and Renes 1982).

With regard to the social or political construct of a village unit, Reynolds (1984,101–152) outlines the ways in which the English medieval village can be misunderstood as community: asserting that proximity does not naturally create community, community is not equal to politically defined boundaries, there is never a truly representative village community and external community relations dictate the level of independence. Village, or variations such as ‘vil’, have been used to describe territories and jurisdiction, this terminology from medieval written sources further clouds our understanding of the village as social community. Village is derived from the Latin villa,

essentially referring to the country house or farmstead, mismatched with the physical definition outlined earlier. The Dutch ‘dorp’ also originally used to describe farmsteads, changing to relate instead to concentrated settlement (Verspay et al. 2018, 29). The instability of the connection between the term village and the community is evident within the same geography and timeframe, which ultimately renders any attempt at wider international comparison with Czech ‘ves’ and Polish ‘wieski’ in the end ‘bound to fail’ (Reynolds 1984, 104). Similar problems are encountered with the inconsistence use of the English word ‘hamlet’ which has no equivalent in Dutch or Czech and an indirect translation in polish as ‘osada’. A hamlet is a ‘small village’ which orders it between a single homestead and a village in scale, but it also dependent on whether without a church (Stevenson 2010). ‘Osada’ and other European terms such as the French ‘hameau’ or German ‘weiller’ can be a part of villages and are not related to the presence of a church but must contain alternative variable elements.

In terms of the upper limit to a village or partition between village and town, ambiguity is just as prevalent. Modern definitions of town rely on population figures which are not reliably available in some cases until the 19th century. In volume 1 of the urban history of Britain (Pallister 2000, 17– 24) it is decided to pursue a socially constructed definition. ‘A town is a permanent and

concentrated human settlement in which a significant proportion of the population is engaged in non-agricultural occupations… The second part is social: the inhabitants of towns normally regard themselves, and are regarded by the inhabitants of predominantly rural settlements, as a diﬀerent sort of people’ Reynolds (1992, 5). Fundamentally this definition is mismatched with a physical definition for a village and also clashes with a village that shows evidence of ‘secondary and tertiary economic and social amenities’ as included in Verspay et al's (2018, 29) village definition. Some have proposed population figures for towns based largely on the number of structures in settlement plans, to show the growth of towns from proto-urban centres such as 8th century: Hamwic (Southampton, UK) 4000-9000, Dorestad (Netherlands) 1000- 2000 (Russo 1998 140-172) and Pohansko (Czech Republic) 400-600 people (Macháček 2010, 434). Domesday Book also provides the often sceptically viewed statistic that 36 out 112 ‘towns’ had a population greater than 1000 (TNS 1086, Palliser 2000, 17–24). These figures will nearly always be impossible to truly know or trace with any certainty but at least they can frame a physical marker of a town.

For the purposes of this discussion, a purely physical definition of the village seems to be the only possible functioning method for a comparative work across four languages. Where possible the socially constructed dividing lines of centrality will be considered but with greater emphasis on

(13)

those boundaries that can be defined on the basis of archaeological settlement plans. In the period of focus (10th to 14th century), the ten or twenty houses suggested by other studies is appropriate, however unlike these suggestions a smaller ‘hamlet’ cannot be defined. A definition must therefore diﬀerentiate between a single homestead which might contain auxiliary structures and a town. The presence of 3 or more habitable structures in a loosely concentrated and

connected settlement will be considered a village, with an upper limit of 100 or more structures, equating to roughly the same amount of families or 500+ population.

3.2 Power and Coercion

The first perspective considers the impact of powerful lords and ecclesiastical institutions, where research emphasises the ways in which these agents shaped the rural landscape to benefit elite interests. This can largely be considered the most traditional and longstanding explanation of the speed and scale of change seen in the high medieval period, ordinarily finding direct evidence in the appearance of churches and manorial complexes in rural context largely dated to the 11th and 12th centuries. This approach provides the most structured solution towards a rapid change, in which power is disseminated out into territories, forming the increased local power of lords and monasteries. It should be recognised that historical sources and narratives are inevitably biased towards representing this factor, accounting for its dominance, as the sources are derived directly from monasteries and royal administrative centres. These processes have been referred to as ‘incastellento’ or ‘encellulement’, a hypothesis derived from the French Annales school of History that proposes new lordly control of peasants dictated the movement of populations into newly formed castles and defensive structures in central places. ‘Signs of a regrouping and a taking control of men, reassembled into fixed points within the cells of the seigneurie, a process which I have termed encellulement’ (Fossier 1999, 42). There is considerable debate between historians on the characterisation of seigneurial and territorial crystallisation, some believe the process to be more akin to a mutation of earlier Carolingian public power towards local territorial power

(Wickham 2016), whereas others suggest a more revolutionary violent coercion of progress (Bisson 1997). Regardless of speed or exact spread of territorial crystallisation of the feudal system, the underlying hypothesis in relation to village formation is that areas of Carolingian influence transitioned between the 9th and 11th century. According to the Power and Coercion school of thought there exists a centre and periphery hypothesis, akin to a world system theory (Sherratt 2002, after Wallerstein 1984) centred in the residue of Roman Italy and France,

accompanying the growth of the Carolingian empire. ‘The further north one goes, the later the beginning’ (Fossier 1999, 33) The ‘proof’ oﬀered for incastellento is that physical defensive structures and markers of feudal institutions (Church, Manor, Castle) appeared in the landscape before concentrated occupation of village morphology. From this perspective, agents of change are the feudal lords that built and directed the lower members of society, therefore denying peasant groups agency in the landscape developments of the period. The narrative of the subjugated and coerced peasants forms the central part of the Marxist outline of the feudal system and economic dynamics of the Middle Ages. Conversely, the power model has also been used to support aspects of alternative explanations such as the population resource and

commercialisation approach, and therefore it is diﬃcult to assign direct evidence of these ideas to a singular framework of long term economic interpretation.

(14)

In the UK this has long been the dominant framework within which the majority of research has been approached, largely due to the impact and clarity of the historically well documented Norman conquest. The Domesday Book (TNS 1086) census data in some respect defines seigneurialism, and draws a direct line of diﬀusion from England to the continent’s Frankish mutation of Roman systems. The Norman planned village is the blueprint of this power and coercion perspective, the newly arrived elites clearing previous settlement and imprinting the layout of fortified manor, accompanying religious centres and plots of lands for the lesser

inhabitants. The ‘Harrying of the North’ lays out the strongest archaeological evidence of this ‘elite power’, in which large areas of northern England were cleared, some remaining so and recorded as waste in the Domesday record, others with replaced entirely with planned morphology. Sheppard (1976) details examples of Yorkshire villages with regular plans where this lordly planning is so often cited, supported by similar conclusions for the East Midlands (Lewis et al. 2001) and as well a study of Ireland (O’Conor 1998). With extension of regional perspectives, this simple cause and eﬀect model of village creation from lordly direction rarely holds up against mass archaeological evidence of larger scales and at some of most intensively researched sites such as Shapwick (Aston 1994) there has been consistent diﬃculty in establishing direct causality in the phases of development. New consensus amongst landscape archaeologists in the UK is emerging around the 8th century nucleation of settlement, which predates the Norman

‘encellulement’ process and must therefore indicate alternative factors. Few oppose the considerable impact of Norman seigneurialism styled in the Carolingian form, but the link to structural organisation of villages has been considerably weakened.

Fossier (1999) outlines how large landholdings were broken up in the Netherlands (Lotharingia) during the 10th century from 10-12 hectares down to 3 or 4 hectares. This break down of the larger estate system lies at the foundation of the ‘encellulement’ theory, to enable the territorial feudal reorganisation largely from 10th century. Leenders (2011) perhaps provides the most coherent evidence to outline archaeological examples in the sandy regions making up the

Southeastern Netherlands such as Brabant and Gelderland, where nucleated villages of the 11th century develop from dispersed farmsteads. Similarly to the UK at the supra-regional scale, the process is hard to evidence, as the fenland, delta and riverine regions, exhibit much earlier established village settlement, often related to the defence against Viking raids rather than lordly interests (Van Heeringen et al. 1995). These regional diﬀerences oppose the unifying picture of spreading feudal system, by indicating much earlier antecedents of village formation exemplified by Spek’s (2004) demonstration of Pre historic origins of some settlement in Drenthe.

In Poland and Czech Republic the ‘encellulement’ concept even more diﬃcult to support uniformly, considering the relatively weak connection of the area to the Carolingian influence. Although both the Piast and Přemyslid states are established in the 10th century, earlier social-judicial systems focused around pre-existing defensive strongholds do not give way to

reorganisation until the 12th and 13th centuries, although there is a great regional variance. Archaeologically these strongholds have been categorised as clustered ‘castellania’ settlements with the addition of wooden defensive elements, operated from which the ‘opole’ or castle court systems (Buko 2007). Some might argue that ‘true’ villages do not appear without the ‘seigneurial cell’ (Chapelot and Fossier 1980), and that ‘German law’ colonisation defines the first appearance, but this would be to deny the great quantity of archaeological evidence for settlement nucleation and it characterises the dominance of Western European perspectives on research. Classical

(15)

feudalism is certainly found in both countries, but it is notably later with a persistent element of serfdom, such as Poland’s 16th century ‘wolka’ reform (Demidowicz 1985). A case might be made that despite the lack of a manorial aspects to village 950-1300, the spread of Christianity and emergence of monasteries which accompanied the establishment of states in the 10th century could be suggested as the nucleating factor for settlement. Ultimately attempts to fit the historical progression of either country into a West European mould is diﬃcult, unless a broad suggestion of delayed adoption of feudalism is postulated.

3.3 Communalisation

Almost in direct opposition to the power and coercion framework, is the proposition that medieval villages developed from the communalisation of horizontal power groups motivated by the mutual benefit and gain of the rural community, in place of vertical lordly command. This perspective emphasises ‘the capacity of farmers, peasants, tenants, labourers, and commoners to negotiate and cooperate with each other, and to engage in dialogues with “elites” in order to rearrange settlements’ (Curtis 2013, 234). Similarly the high medieval period and the 10th and 11th centuries are the suggested turning point, as both rely on the crystallisation of legal frameworks or at the least fixed social contracts. However, communalisation is suggestive of a much more gradual long term transition into this crystallisation period, as the importance of preceding, enduring structures of organisation are central to theory. In some cases pre-Roman systems are proposed as the antecedent forerunners for these communal contracts, influencing the concentration of dispersed settlement into nucleated villages. The relationship between socio-economic cooperation and the witnessed shift towards concentrated villages perhaps lies as the weak point, as illustrated by Wickham’s (2016) argument that the rural commune could easily have co-existed with highly dispersed settlement patterns. A central part of the communalisation perspective is the motivation derived from resource hunger that drives this organisation, in that communities are driven to assarting, the cultivation or colonisation of marginal land, by the relative lack of share in the current context. In some ways, this suggests a link to power coercion model, in that

mismanagement (or inequality) from these systems motivated communities to take an

entrepreneurial risk of setting out for new settlements. In some cases this colonisation theory is evidenced to be directly incentivised by the manorial system, in that greater freedoms in

colonisation settlements were in eﬀect sanctioned by vertical power dynamics. These concepts, as with the power and coercion model are again derived primarily from the social historical

perspectives and can be very diﬃcult to approach from the physical traces of village development aside from the larger trends of stagnation or growth.

In the Netherlands, there has been considerable discussion on the prevalence and regional variability of communally led village formation and motivations. Van Bavel’s (2010) Manors and Markets emphasises communal water management systems as an important factor. Historical geographical evidence from Holland shows the overlapping social constructs of the water board and the definition of territorial boundaries (Van der Linden 1972, after Verspay et al. 2018). Similarly the threat of inundation of water, is the primary incentive of collective organisation behind the concentrated ‘terpen’ in Friesland, which as discussed earlier, considerably predate any consideration of origin from the power perspective (Carmiggelt 2000). The village green is a powerful representation of cooperation in the commons perspectives, with the Dutch evidence of regular brinks as a focal point for settlement largely in Drenthe (Spek 2004) showing a

(16)

considerable parallel with the postulated communal origins of village greens in England, specifically Cambridgeshire (Oosthuizen 1997). Reynolds (1984, 339) discusses at length the application of sociological historical perspectives in Western Europe, concluding for England that the ‘Norman conquest cannot have been responsible for all the changes in England which are traditionally attributed to it’, and there was an underlying continuity of collective values preceding the Middle Ages, which responded to increasingly complex problems. The link between the physical prevalence of common greens, might be highlighted from an environmental view, with these contexts often set up as the necessity of communities to work together to utilise the wetland challenges. Similarly upland and mountainous regions represent the same challenges to habitation that have been drawn into categorisation as marginal land, a concept has been considered at length in relation medieval economic study (Bailey 1989). The colonisation of marginal land forms the central bond between communalisation and concentrated settlement, therefore relies in most regions heavily on an underpinning of long term economic and

demographic growth that facilitates later 12th and 13th century settlement.

The theme of colonisation is just as strong if not stronger when communalisation is considered from a Polish and Czech context. Traditionally colonisation has been viewed in conjunction with the power coercion model, as the spread of ‘German law’ and ‘Magdeburg rights’ from west to east (Higounet 1990). More contemporary research has begun to recognise the prevalence of ‘internal’ colonisation. ‘In the long-term, there is no doubt of Slavic share in colonisation. It is clearly proved by the occurrence of Slavic place names, which surpassed by far the perimeter of archaeologically delimited areas with pre-colonisation Slavic settlements, and reached the regions not settled until the twelfth or thirteenth century.’ (Klápště 2012, 216) Archaeologically these processes are most often evidenced in the Czech republic and the Silesia region of Poland by the appearance of ‘Waldhufendorf’ villages in the 12th and 13th century, also tying the concept to the field system perspective (Horák and Klír, 2017). However, the extent to which colonisation villages are equal to communalisation is very much disputed and has just as easily been presented as examples of the power and coercion model, particularly when viewed in the light of oppressive late medieval and early modern ‘Fryderycjańska’ and ‘Józefińska’ occupation. Between

1100-1300 the link relies on the concept that episodes of colonisation do more to support communalisation due to the rational interpretation that in peripheral areas elites will have less control, and social groups will operate with a greater sense of autonomy. The concept of

marginality is an unstable foundational as ‘Traditional views of marginality changed radically, and we should now see various environments as oﬀering diﬀerent potential for human communities that will not always be based on cereal production’ (Rippon 2008, 13)

Ultimately, archaeological and geographical (empirical) evidence will always fail to provide strong support one way or the other for the agents of change debate, as arguments are founded on intangible social construction. Across all the countries of consideration, archaeological evidence can and often has been used from both perspectives. The simplest conclusion to make therefore is that both vertical or horizontal power dynamics existed to varying degrees, and generally the balance becomes more vertical towards the 14th century from a relatively horizontal start in the 10th century across all the countries of consideration. This incremental transition is of course tempered by a huge variance of both preceding socio-economic systems and the environmental context. Although a direct linear concept is fragile even at a regional scale the proposed

(17)

European scale with the provisor that large regions do not see significant village formation and remain as dispersed settlement for some time.

3.4 Field Systems and Resource Management

Leaving the spectrum of ‘agents of change’ debates behind, perhaps the most dominant explanation of village formation is related directly to the organisation of field systems. This long standing school of thought is rooted firmly in the early historical geographical work, which ties the appearance of villages with the appearance of newly organised divisions of land into loosely termed ‘open field’ systems. ‘Open fields’ is a catch all term which covers many subdivisions and nuance of definitions, but the generally accepted thought is that by the removable of forms of land divisions (hedge, ditch, fence) larger parcels of land were created from the combination of earlier smaller fields. Theoretically many have suggested that these larger fields were farmed in common facilitating an improved crop yield on previous systems, which aggregated across space and time accumulated into surplus food and population growth. This abstract theory can be related by some to Malthusian economic theory, in that the increased productivity of field systems enabled societies to stave off the cyclical inevitability of crisis. Renes (2010) provides a comprehensive overview of these theories from a comparative European perspective, demonstrating that the monocausal and simplistic conclusions of open field origins in regional studies are insufficient in wider European comparison. Ultimately, few disagree that a relationship between village and open field exists, it is the causation and chronology which is so difficult to define, Symonds summarises this well as the stalemate of a chicken and egg debate (Verspay et al. 2018, 43).

In the UK, some propose an open field system that predates the village in the midland system of England, where the spatial relationship between fields and plots, dated by ceramic scatter are explained with lordly planning and a feudal motivation to improve the yield of the land. The subsequent link to mass desertion of these central province villages raises a diﬃcult theoretical link to Malthusian economic interpretation of scarcity and natural checks (war, famine, pestilence). Rippon’s (2008) assessment of the areas outside of the central province however highlight the inability to formulate any rules for the wider geographical area of UK, with numerous examples of divergence from this pattern. Taylor (1983) along with several other scholars, propose a far more incremental growth of both systems founded in the early medieval period which defy a linear relationship but recognise the circular reinforcing nature of field systems on the growth and distribution of villages. Similarly the perspectives in the Netherlands have long emphasised the regional, environmental factors that mitigated broad relationships between resource management and villages. Theuw’s (2008) work fits best with the long term incremental view of village formation beginning in the early medieval period for Limburg and North Brabant in the sandy regions of the south Netherlands. Other regions of the Netherlands often do not see the imposition of open fields until much later, when a link with settlement becomes more tenuous.

Open field systems are a much later adoption of largely the 13th century in Poland and the Czech Republic, which similarly denies the simplistic causation of formation, as villages are firmly

present in many regions without these systems. In the Czech Republic open field system was referred to as ‘pluzina’ when related directly to a single village and were organised into long, narrow parallel plots mainly in response to the new, single direction tillage technology (Bayer and Beneš, 2004, after Houfková et al. 2015) In Poland fields took a comparable narrow strip form

(18)

referred to as ‘Łan’ thought to be derived from the German ‘lehen’, a hint at what is often proposed as part of the colonisation package from Germany. Oval shaped ‘rundorf’ villages sometimes accompany these open fields, however the narrow are most often accompanied by ‘Waldhufendorf’ strip villages. Figure 2 maps the distribution of these ‘Waldhufendorf’ villages thought to emerge through deforestation across both Poland and Czech Republic, ‘the High Medieval origin of the field system corresponds with information about the colonisation process in other marginal areas of the Czech Republic. We hypothesise that the current-day landscape pattern around Malonín, which reflects the medieval landscape, is representative for many other villages in marginal areas of Central Europe that originated in the Middle Ages.’ Houfková, et al.

(2015, 89). Open fields are also found in more northern parts of Poland, as illustrated in figure 4, however these have proven more diﬃcult to date to the high medieval, due to the mass

reorganisation into open fields associated the Volka reform (Demidowicz, 1985), and later obscured by communist land reform (as also seen in the Czech Republic) (Drâgoi and Bâlgar 2014).

Fig. 1 Renes (1988)

Top-left, Open Fields in the Netherlands. Fig. 2 Horák (2017) Bottom-Left, Distribution of waldhufendorf fields system. CZ and PL Fig. 3 Roberts (2002)

Top Right, Putative extent of

Open Fields in England. Fig. 4 Renes (2010)

Bottom-Right, Field

systems in pre-industrial Europe.

(19)

The conclusions that seem most sensible therefore, are that some villages certainly predated open field layout, enough that a direct linear relationship cannot be confirmed. Whether villages that emerge contemporaneously with open fields acculturated or were coerced into being, relates back to the agents of change debate. The prosperity that appears to arise from these field

systems seems rarely to be argued against, suggesting that both vertical or horizontal power would motivate diﬀusion of the system and accepted the risk involved. The evidence of open fields relates directly to a broad Economic History debate around a transition from feudalism to capitalism which reached its height in the 1980s, ‘the Brenner debate’. Brenner defined as the neo-Marxist perspective that the prime mover behind a shift in capitalism was largely derived from an agrarian revolution formed from changing social relations rather than the Neo-Malthusian cyclical suggestion. Although the defining period for these debates mark the 16th and 17th centuries as the turning point, the foundational 11th-14th period is central to the contested points (Bailey 1998). In this respect both perspectives agree that the economy stumbled towards a catastrophic crisis at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The field system has mostly been conducted from these staganationist models, but a perspective has begun to emerge that oﬀers more dynamic view of the high medieval period.

3.5 Commercialisation - Market Integration and Urbanisation

Commerce is defined as ‘the activity of buying and selling products and services’ (Stevenson 2010). Commercialisation therefore is the establishment of this practice in replacing a subsistence production. An underlying assumption is that rural settlement was in the preceding periods solely reliant on agricultural subsistence production, namely growing of food that will sustain the

inhabitants, which then shifts towards exchanging a surplus of food as well as the production of secondary and tertiary goods that rely on the exchange for food. Commercialisation is often tied closely with the evidence of trade and monetisation but the production of secondary products or evidence of coinage does not necessarily imply any distance of movement or quality of product. When classifying this transition, evidence of monetary systems it is not necessarily proof, as barter exchange can be considered commercial. In many respects, commercialisation represents an abstract concept that can be diﬃcult to test archaeologically, with evidence of intensive

perennial craft production often the most clear indicator. Historical ledgers and onomastic census data can also support the commercial development of new occupational and locational

specialisation of production that deviate from agrarian subsistence. As with many social and economic concepts applied to the medieval world, there is always a danger of assumption around the the linear development of ‘progress towards capitalism’, which can lead to anachronistic overemphasis. Similarly the undoubted aspects of commercialisation present in earlier socio-economic power structures, such as the Roman age trade, muddle our understanding of

commercialisation dynamics.When the theory of commercialisation is applied directly to Medieval settlement, it is held that commerce motivated the concentration of houses into more nucleated plans to benefit from a more eﬃcient social-economic organisation, encouraging more access, connection and the development of markets. The market, whether informal or formal exchange, forms a link to the prosperity and continuation of settlement, which can act cyclically in positive or negative directions.

The most common examples of urbanisation (proto-towns) in the 10th century are earlier established trade centres often referred to as ‘wics’, ‘emporia’ in the West and ‘pevnost’,

(20)

‘zalażakimiast’ translated as strongholds in the East. Examples of some the largest of these early centres: in the UK London (Lundenwic), York (Eoforwic), Ipswich (Yippeswic), Southampton (Hamwic), In the Netherlands Domburg (Zeeland), Dorestad (Riverine), In Czech Republic

Pohansko (Moravia), Budeč (Bohemia), In Poland Truso (Pomerania) Cracow (Little Poland). The influence of early urbanisation can be extended to a more rural context with proposition of a hinterland to these centres, which some have assessed in terms of Thunensian and Christallerian economic models. The commercialisation of hinterland settlement has been shown to gravitate around these centres in many of the earlier examples (Buko 2008, Macháček 2007, Naylor 2016, Theuws 2008). Richard Hodges’s (1989) influential work ‘Dark Age Economics’ essentially outlines how these early medieval trade centres, typified by elite gift exchange, made a transition to

market trade by the 10th century, essentially defining the point at which a process of commercialisation moulded some centres into towns and others fading into abandonment. Supported by Barrett et al. (2000 15) ‘when did fundamental economic change really happen?’ thus becomes a matter of assessing the degree of market trade, or more realistically, of the relative importance of staple over prestige goods in exchange transactions.’

Amongst the formation of the Piast and Přemyslid states in the 10th century Eastern countries, there is a recognisable continuation of strongholds with establishment of many new settlements with defensive elements and accompanying hinterland settlement (Buko 2010 and Poláček 2008). ‘Archaeological evidence shows that the extensive settlement “agglomerations” that developed during this period were supported by an extensive agricultural base’ (Kozáková et al. 2014) Non agricultural hinterland settlement is also evidenced in metallurgy of Bohemia’s rural settlement connected to early Prague (Ettler 2015) and Krakow (Kowalska 2016). Buko (2008) cites that ‘bullion became common on the internal market on a national scale even before the end of the 10th century… the direct connection of the stronghold and the ancillary settlements immediately adjacent (Podgrodzie) often also fortified, thus formed a new type of settlement. The extensive evidence in the Central-east Europe combined with the lack of field system layout prior to these settlements makes commercialisation the dominant factor in driving creation of new village settlement before the late 12th century.

In contrast the Western countries see the earlier adoption and spread of field systems alongside these commercial networks of central places, which although impossible to truly quantify and compare could be interpreted as a lesser impact of commercialisation on new settlement. One explanation for the comparably less intensive urbanisation in the West is related to the Viking age and Scandinavian influence ‘By 900, Viking raids were mostly over, and England was entering a period of relative peace and internal political stability that would last into the middle of the eleventh century. Nucleated villages were beginning to form in some parts of the country, common fields were emerging, and a modest infrastructure of towns was starting to develop. In short, it is possible to detect in 900 the early stages of the economic trends that can be found in full swing in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.’ (Langdon 2006). Theuws (2009) outlines the diﬃculty in categorising this transition of trading systems in the Dutch context, concluding that early medieval trade centres such as Dorestad can be seen as an eclectic economy, which fades away due to the ‘changing articulation of value systems.’ Despite these suggestions of the limited urbanisation in the West, at the beginning of the 12th century a sustained period of urbanisation would begin to form with a hierarchy that ranged from ‘settlements that were, in physical reality,

(21)

rural villages but whose inhabitants had been given ‘borough’ or urban rights, to large regional market and administrative towns and major mercantile ports.’ (Loveluck 2013, 25)

‘By 1300 about 14 percent of Europe’s inhabitants lived in towns with populations in excess of 2,000… “cities” in the “U.K.” could account for less than one in 20 of the population, 4.4 per cent to be precise’ (Bairoch 1988 after Dyer 1992, 283) This shows clearly that urbanisation took oﬀ significantly at some stage during the 12 and 13th Centuries, with Dyer (1992) along with more recent demographic estimates suggesting even larger percentages and a London population of more than 80,000. In the UK this period of commercialisation can be evidenced by extensive records of market grants primarily in the 12th and 13th centuries (Britnell 1996). Many villages were granted these markets by royal decree and their impact can be shown morphologically by the establishment of open areas in which people gathered for exchange (Taylor 1983). These market areas were often short lived and fade from historical record, but in some cases they persist for long periods in rural context and in others enabled the growth of villages into market towns. In the low countries, particularly the Campine region of the Netherlands, Van Bavel (2010, 326)similarly finds ‘general development in which the growing cities and markets exercised a greater influence on agriculture, inducing further specialisation… which grew in the 12th and 13th Centuries.’ From an Eastern perspective the 13th century is often cited as a major transition period, fundamentally initiated by the breakup of the earlier strong hold urbanisation system (Klápště 2012). Some postulate about the destructive influence of Mongol invasions from the East or the influence of ‘German law’ feudal social constructs from the West, ultimately this set both Poland and the Czech village formation towards the spread open fields and a greater

acculturation with the socio-economic organisation to the West.

Figure 5, provides a visualisation of the broad trends across all four countries of consideration in relation to the dominate interpretative frameworks within which new villages formed or existing settlement transformed. It should be made clear that the axis does not represent zero so all four factors are acting at all times, the placement of each point provides a crude approximation of the dominant factor acting during the proposed century and masks considerable regional and local variance. Despite the inexactitude of this approach it provides an important background upon which to plot the individual case study villages for future comparative outcomes. 

Fig. 5 Visualisation of village formation factors, Western and East Central Europe.

(22)

4. Methodology

Now that an outline of the broad interpretation frameworks has been lay out across each country of consideration, a methodological approach to case study research can be detailed. Before stating the limitations of this study, the selection of case study villages within regional and European spatial context is introduced in figure 7. No primary excavation has been conducted to investigate the aims of this research, therefore secondary analysis of current data and past excavation will be reliable upon to approach the research questions. The following limitations dictated the selection of case study villages. Once these have been outlined there will be brief outline of comparative indicators and evidence. In each of the four selected villages this study will examine all available data at the local scale to be compared with the earlier outlined framework of village development.

Fig 7. European map of case study village distribution and regional context.

Cottenham,

South Cambs, Cambridgeshire, East of England, United Kingdom (UK)

Warnsveld,

County of Zutphen, Gelderland,

Kleczanów,

Sandomierz County, Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, Lesser Poland, Poland (PL)

(23)

4.1 Limitations

Asymmetric Information and Incongruity of

scale-An axiomatic but necessary point to make clear is that we do not have full or complete information on any medieval village development, even the hypothetical omnipotent archaeologist, historian and geographer collectively would still have considerable gaps of knowledge. Fundamentally, there are also some proposed processes which leave no physical trace in the archaeological record such as social constructions of territory or culture. Further limitations are typified from the bottom up perspective by poorly understood ceramic dating phases, mismatched with the limitations of depth from top down historical geographic work. The most challenging aspect of interdisciplinary work is scale of observation, archaeology working at the narrowest site level and history at the widest global level. Top down surveys from historical geography are much more capable of addressing broad scales than Archaeology, which requires a mass accumulation of individual excavation to reach anywhere close to landscape scale. Particularly in the rural context of villages, it is rare that such serial data is available unless there has been large scale development led (rescue) archaeology prior to expansive housing estates development. In order to attempt comparison of village development across Europe it is necessary to look for the villages that have the most abundant information from all disciplines.

Urban bias, under-investigation of rural

settlement-Rural environments are less explored than urban contexts. settlement-Rural contexts although perhaps less complex or extensive than urban, are considerably more frequent. More plainly there are relatively more rural settlements than urban settlements in all the countries of study, past or present,

therefore assuming a completely equal distribution of investigation in Urban or Rural contexts, there would be greater urban investigation. This starting setback is compounded by the historical inclination to favour the narratives of elites, most often found in central urban context, the earlier historiographical discussion provides more insight how this developed. Despite the exponential growth of archaeological data, particularly since the Valetta treaty (Malta), there are few signs the balance is tipping in favour of rural contexts. Verspay et al. (2018, 284) exemplify in their synthesis of the Netherlands based on the Malta dataset, even in the presence of large quantities of

evidence outcomes are often stifled.

Occupation Bias

-When rural contexts and villages are investigated they are more often than not deserted villages, that have ceased to be inhabited at some point in the past. A Lewis (2007, 135) describes the historic bias of deserted or abandoned settlement to our understanding of villages for two core reasons: ‘First is the easy appeal of deserted sites, with their lure of mystery, intrigue and tragedy eloquently expressed in the very words used so often to describe those ‘lost’, ‘vanished’,

‘abandoned’ or ‘ghost’ villages. The second factor involves a very much more practical

consideration: multiple private ownership and variable use (gardens, yards, drives, playgrounds and so on) make obtaining permission to excavate more diﬃcult in a currently occupied rural settlement (CORS) than in than the quiet swards of a deserted village site.’ Lewis (2007, 135). This is the principal motivation behind the sampling techniques of the CORS project and the

The Commercial Village, High Medieval Europe, 900-1300AD.&nbsp;A comparative study of village development across the UK, Netherlands, Poland and Czech Republic.&nbsp; James Henderson