The Origins of Open Field Agriculture

Trevor Rowley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367180386
• eBook ISBN: 9780429602351
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Originally published in 1981, The Origins of Open Field Agriculture looks at the problems connected with open field agriculture – the origins of strip cultivation, the three-field system, the adaptation of 'Celtic' fields, and the development of ploughing techniques. The book looks at the challenges to traditional ideas on the origins of settlement and their associated economy, and casts new light on understandings of village development. The book suggests that conventional views of the nucleated village, in the midst of open field strips as a product of the Anglo-Saxon migration, is no longer tenable. The book brings together the work of distinguished archaeologists, historians, and historical geographers and opens up a new perspective on the early development of medieval agriculture.

1 Archaeology and the Origins of Open-Field Agriculture

C.C. Taylor

Numerous scholars have attempted to describe, define and explain the general system of agriculture practised over much of Britain, and indeed on the continent, throughout most of the medieval period and later. However, in spite of all the effort put into the study there still seems little agreement on what constituted open-field agriculture and how and when it developed. At its simplest, open-field agriculture was the means by which land was cultivated by the inhabitants of a township who worked their holdings in unenclosed parcels.

This definition hardly explains the true complexity or variety of the system as it is revealed through medieval and post-medieval documentation. For the definition not only embraces the highly developed Midland, or regular, common field system as first defined by Gray as well as the numerous other variants described in detail by Dr Campbell (see below pp. 112-29), but also covers other related systems such as runrig and infield and outfield, which are well documented as having existed in many places in this country. All these variants can be, and indeed have been, defined to a greater or lesser extent, but from the archaeological point of view it is important to note the main characteristics which separate one type from another. Dr Thirsk defined the classic Midland common field system as being made up of four essentiale lements (Thirsk, 1966). First, arable and meadow were divided into strips among the cultivators. Secondly, both arable and meadow were thrown open for common pasturing at certain times. Thirdly, there were common rights over waste and lastly the ordering of these activities was regulated by some form of assembly of the people involved. On the other hand the other more irregular common field systems are differentiated by such features as whether cropping or pasturing is undertaken in common or whether regulation is by individuals or groups. All these and many other factors such as crop rotations, tenurial arrangements and inheritance laws have been used to explain the many different forms that open-field agriculture is known to have taken. In the final analysis, an assessment of the relative importance of the different factors which go to make up the various types of open-field systems might go some way towards explaining the origins of such systems.

All these definitions and factors, however, are a long way from the archaeologists’ data base for open-field agriculture. Archaeologists, by the very nature of their discipline, are concerned with the material remains of the past, and thus they are mainly involved with the physical manifestations of agricultural systems, for example ridge-and-furrow, embanked strips and strip lynchets.

At once we are faced with an almost insuperable problem. Most of the definitions of the various types of open fields, admirable though they are, usually say nothing about the only aspect of open-field agriculture that the archaeologist can grasp, the physical remains of cultivation. The closest that archaeologists can approach to most of the definitions is through the use of the word strips. The strips, as defined by the historians or geographers, are the basic units of tenure and cultivation; the archaeologist’s ridge-and-furrow or strip lynchets might be considered to be related. They clearly are related by the end of the medieval period, at least to some extent, but this is not to say that they were always so linked. Indeed if it is possible to criticise most of the definitions of open-field agriculture it is in their inclusion of the word strip. It is at least theoretically possible that open-field arable could be divided among the cultivators in blocks of land of very different shapes. All that would be necessary is for the cultivators to have a different type of plough and/or to use a different form of ploughing technique from those that produce ridge-and-furrow or long strips.

Here lies the basic difference between the historical approach and that of the archaeologist. The historians’ and the historical geographers’ definitions of open fields, brought out in the other papers of this volume, are definitions not merely of a method of cultivation but of systems of cropping, tenure and social organisation. This is far removed from the relatively simple remains of plough ridges, pottery and buried soils which are the concern of the archaeologists. This is not to say that the archaeologists have no part to play in the understanding of the origins of open fields. They certainly have, but it must be recognised that they are working from a standpoint very different from that of the historians and much of what is recoverable from documentary sources is often unrelated to the evidence that archaeologists can provide.

The difference between archaeologists and historians studying open fields is rather like two parallel railway tracks. Most of the time the tracks are together but in a slightly different place. Occasionally there are points where the tracks join and there are numerous branch lines leading off in various directions. Both tracks are heading for the same terminus, but one suspects that when they reach it they will end on adjacent platforms. Both archaeologists and historians must be very conscious of the different forms of evidence they are dealing with in their common study of open fields. Most of the evidence is not directly related and some of it may even conflict. It is not that one form of evidence is better or worse than the other, it is that they are different and thus tell us about different aspects of the same phenomena.

With this basic thought in our minds, let us look at the archaeological problems in discovering the origins of open fields. First, a general point: it is extremely difficult to discover the origins of almost any aspect of human behaviour, for until a feature, technique or organisation is relatively common-place and well developed, it is usually very difficult to detect archaeologically. Thus on general grounds it is not easy for archaeologists to find the origin of a system of cultivation, even in simple terms, regardless of the other and more important aspects of the definitions of open fields.

It is also necessary to consider what archaeologists have to deal with – the physical remains of a field system. Fields, by their very nature, are the products of agricultural practices which are first and foremost intended to disturb the ground. Thus the archaeological evidence they will produce is likely to be far more suspect than the accumulated material from a sealed deposit of, say, a pit, ditch or bank. In particular, only when the physical remains of a field underlie a sealed dated deposit or feature or are overlaid or cut by a datable feature can we be absolutely sure of their period. These criteria are seldom met with and even when they are they are not very helpful in showing the beginnings of the field system under investigation. Thus the strip lynchets excavated at Bishopstone, Wiltshire, covered a Roman ditch (Wood, 1956) and the ridge-and-furrow at Hen Domen passed under the bailey of the eleventh-century castle (Barker and Laws on, 1971), two facts which in themselves are not conclusive evidence of origin. The really early dating necessary to prove the existence of such types of cultivation is still lacking. The work at Gwithian remains almost the sole example of closely dated early medieval fields, but whether the cultivation ridges there are even the result of ploughing remains highly questionable (Fowler and Thomas, 1962).

The limits of archaeological evidence must be stressed. Much is known about prehistoric and Roman fields for they have been identified, planned and excavated. Details such as how they were laid out, what boundaries they had, what types of ploughs were used, what techniques of cultivation were employed on them, what crops were grown on them, and sometimes what settlements they belonged to have become clear in recent years. All this is very important and impressive. But archaeologists do not know and cannot know what, from the historian’s point of view, is the most important of all, the overall tenurial arrangements and how the fields were organised by the society which developed and cultivated them. When archaeologists come to open fields, because the historians can tell them at least something about the tenurial background, they can understand the physical remains in terms of divided strips, two or three field systems, and rotations. They can fit the physical remains into the wider system of the agricultural economy that can be shown to have existed by the late medieval period. They must never forget, however, that without the historical evidence ridge-and-furrow, for example, would be totally meaningless beyond the certainty that it was formed by a technique of ploughing. They would never realise the complex pattern of landholding, communal cultivation and social organisation just from the physical remains themsleves. Thus ridge-and-furrow can be of any date and all one needs is a plough of a certain type and to use that plough in a particular way. After all no one would suggest that there was ever an open-field system in Australia, yet there are large areas of good ridge-and-furrow in New South Wales (Twidale, 1972). Of course this does not mean that as archaeologists working in the historic period we cannot use historical evidence. We would be rightly accused of narrow-minded attitudes if we did not use it. But we must not forget that this evidence is historical and not archaeological and therefore is not necessarily explaining what we are dealing with. Clearly there is a link between ridge-and-furrow and the open-field systems in their final complex form, for the historians have shown us this. But whether this relationship is of any significance in understanding the origins of either the ploughing technique or the complex system of agricultural and social organisation that made up the open-field system is by no means certain.

Another difficulty is that fields, again by their very nature, are subject to both long- and short-term changes in purely agricultural practices which may have nothing to do with the overall operation of the open-field system in its wider sense. These changes inevitably result in the destruction of much of the earlier phases by the process of later cultivation. This is, of course, true of all archaeological sites but it is much more apparent with fields than with other remains. Thus the physical manifestations of open fields which archaeologists have to deal with are the result of the pattern imposed by the most recent cultivation, not the first. Between the last and the first may be a thousand years or more of continuous destruction and alteration, year in and year out. This is on a vastly different scale from the apparent 20-year rebuilding cycle of houses in medieval villages or even the gradual denudation of a motte or a hill fort.

Thus archaeologists who look at ridge-and-furrow or strip lynchets, and accept them as medieval, either in form or layout, and see in them the possible origins of an open-field system, do so at their peril. Those who believe that the physical remains that we can see might, even remotely, be connected with the beginnings of the field system, need to be able to put forward very convincing proof.

As a field archaeologist this writer has been, perhaps more than most people, involved in the recording of the complexity of the physical remains of open fields, and in particular ridge-and-furrow and strip lynchets. Yet in the end it would seem that though it is possible to learn much about the history of agriculture from the detailed examination of these remains, it is not easy to understand the origins of the open-field system from them.

There are many interesting features of ridge-and-furrow which seem to reflect certain techniques, events or trends and which are perhaps worth detailing. There is widespread evidence for the overploughing of former headlands to make two, or sometimes three, end-on furlongs into one with the resulting double or treble reversed-S curve. This might be interpreted as a result of the changeover from ox traction to the more powerful horse traction. However this relatively common feature implies considerable changes in the tenurial as well as the agricultural arrangement of the fields at the time it took place. The same reason, that is an alteration of plough traction, is perhaps the answer to the less common occurrence of the partial elimination of reversed-S ridges by the formation of later straight ones. The plentiful evidence for the extension of furlongs into formerly damp or difficult ground, or the opposite, the shortening of furlongs to avoid land which had become waterlogged or difficult to cultivate, might be explained as a result of complex economic or even climatic changes. The process of throwing together narrow ridges to form wide ones or the splitting of wide ridges to form narrow ones, also well attested, may be interpreted as the result of tenurial changes. The overploughing of stabilised land-slips in ridge-and-furrow, very common in some areas, may be a reflection of economic prosperity or of overpopulation. Other features that have been noted, such as the joining up without a break of two, three or four ridges into one, or the relaying of one set of ridges at right angles to another and older set, are more difficult to explain. On a larger scale the evidence for the extension of villages into fields formerly ploughed in ridge-and-furrow, as well as the extension of ridge-and-furrow into areas of abandoned villages or of abandoned parts of existing villages, also reflects the picture now emerging of constant change in the physical layout of open-field systems.

Most medieval archaeologists are familiar with the evidence for Roman sites and even Saxon settlement discovered below ridge-and-furrow. Sites such as West Stow or New Wintles come to mind. However, such total alteration of the landscape also went on at a much later date. There is now growing evidence for the complete overploughing of some deserted medieval villages in the Midlands, and other sites appear to have suffered the same fate. For example at Grafton Regis, Northamptonshire, there is a complex monastic and later manorial site which has been fully excavated (RCHM, forthcoming). The archaeological evidence shows that the abandonment of the site occurred in the late fifteenth century while documentary evidence indicates that it was deserted soon after 1491. Yet air photographs show that the site was later entirely overploughed with ridge-and-furrow, part of one of the later open fields of the area which existed until parliamentary enclosure in 1727. In fact there was almost no trace of the site on the ground before the modern destruction of the ridge-and-furrow and even the hollow-ways passing from the adjacent village through the ridge-and-furrow to the next village totally ignored it.

The evidence from the physical remains of the common fields thus indicates that ridge-and-furrow, and indeed strip lynchets, are the result of many complex changes over the centuries. However, it is probable that most of these obvious results of change and alteration are relatively modern and many are not even medieval at all but are part of the immense economic, social, tenurial and technical changes affecting agriculture in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which as yet have hardly been appreciated even by the economic historians.

Nevertheless archaeologists must examine very closely the results of the recent work on open fields by historians and geographers who have shown the complexity of open-field systems, which the slighter work of the field archaeologist whole-heartedly confirms. It is clear from recent literature that, even by the thirteenth century, there was not one type of open-field system but many, adapted to complex geographical, social, tenurial and economic circumstances and differing not only from region to region but from parish to parish. The well-documented late medieval and post-medieval alterations and changes to these systems are even more complex and from the purely archaeological point of view it would seem that it is very difficult to learn much about the early forms of open-field systems from the close examination of the physical remains. Archaeologists are seeing only the final complications of a slowly evolving system of agriculture which has been subject to many changes.

Is it not possible to go further than this? Can we not see from the wider, overall patterns of ridge-and-furrow or strip lynchets some clue, if not to the origins of the open-field system, at least to their early evolution? Various attempts have been made to see an underlying picture of development of the open fields from the shape and size of furlongs. Certainly to some extent minor developments can be suggested. These include the infilling of awkwardly shaped areas of waste, perhaps once left out of the main arable system, but later incorporated into it so producing curiously triangular blocks of ridge-and-furrow. On the whole, however, these can probably be attributed to relatively late expansion of arable land. likewise the marked contrast between areas of furlongs of regular layout and those which are intermingled and interlocked is probably better interpreted as an adaptation to the physical environment than a part of the development of the fields themselves. In any case even if it is accepted that these fields show development, they tell us nothing about the origins of the open-field system itself.

What then can be the archaeological contribution to the problem of the origin of open fields? There are four important ways in which archaeological evidence can be used. Perhaps the most important of these is that of the continuing research into, and the wider dissemination of knowledge of, prehistoric and Roman fields and society. One of the major mistakes made by most past, and indeed many present, non-archaeological workers in the study of open fields is their failure to appreciate the pre-existing physical and social conditions in which the medieval open fields developed. In many of the seminal works by geographers and historians there is still the stated or implied belief that the medieval open fields originated in a virgin landscape and were developed by a society which was quite unconnected with all the social and tenurial, economic and technical encumbrances of their predecessors in Britain. Yet if prehistoric and Roman archaeology has achieved anything in the last 20 years it is that it has proved beyond doubt that from as early as 2000 BC Britain was a well-populated country, almost totally exploited agriculturally by a sophisticated and complex society. Certainly by the latter part of the Roman era, most parts of Britain were densely settled, with fields of some form over much larger areas than those of the twelfth or thirteenth centuries AD. These fields were being worked by technically advanced farmers, operating from thousands of settlements, and almost certainly arranged in clearly definable land-units or estates based on a complicated system of tenure.

It was into this landscape and into this society that perhaps a relatively few Saxon people were injected and in the fullness of time developed what can be interpreted as true open fields. Therefore any discussion of the origins of open fields has to take into account the fact that, whenever or however the Saxons developed open fields, these had to be based on a pre-existing system of agriculture and field shapes and did not evolve in an empty countryside devoid of any remains of earlier farming. Whether the existing system or the fields were still in use when the open fields as they are understood finally evolved is a question that cannot be answered at the moment. But the main point is that the open-field system was at least partly based on what was already there.

This brings us to the second way in which archaeologists can use the methods of their discipline, that is to identify and date the earlier pattern of pre-Saxon fields on which the later open fields may have been based. Such work has already started and Peter Fowler and the writer have already published the admittedly slender evidence that was known to us two years ago (Taylor and Fowler, 1978). It was recognised that some of the furlongs in the medieval and later open fields are bounded by ditches, some of which appear to be Roman in origin. This evidence suggests that we may have the beginnings of proof that the basic unit of cultivation in the medieval open fields, that is the furlong or blocks of similarly orientated strips, was based on an older arrangement of fields, probably of Roman origin. This is not to suggest that the ultimate shape of every furlong was that of a Roman field. Indeed there is good evidence that this is not so. All that one can say is that the basic framework of furlongs may have been partly established on earlier fields and that these were subsequently altered by the later developments which have been outlined above.

At the moment the evidence for this hypothesis is weak and needs much more support which it is hoped will be forthcoming. But even if, in the end, the hypothesis is proved, it is still by no means certain that archaeologists have learnt anything about the origins of the open fields. We may finally convince the historians and geographers of the importance of the prehistoric and Roman physical basis of the medieval open fields, but whether we will be able to explain how the latter could or did originate is more doubtful. It is quite possible that the Roman and prehistoric fields were in fact open fields but we have no way of proving it. If open-field agriculture did exist in Roman or even prehistoric times, then all of us, archaeologists, historians and geographers alike, have little hope of ever establishing its origins.

Thus we come to the final way in which archaeologists can aid the understanding of some of the most important later developments of open fields, if not their origin. This will be achieved by collaboration with other scholars and not by archaeologists alone. For example the fully-developed classic common field system, Gray’s Midland System, which in a variety of forms came to occupy much of England by the thirteenth century...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures and Plates
• Preface
• 1. Archaeology and the Origins of Open-field Agriculture
• 2. The Origins of Open-field Agriculture – The Archaeological Fieldwork Evidence
• 3. Open-field Agriculture – The Evidence from the Pre-Conquest Charters of the West Midlands
• 4. Approaches to the Adoption of the Midland System
• 5. Commonfield Origins-The Regional Dimension
• 6. The Interpretation of Subdivided Fields: A Study in Private or Communal Interests?
• 7. Townfield Origins : The Case of Cockfield, County Durham
• 8. The Evolution of Settlement and Open-field Topography in North Arden Down to 1300
• 9. The Origin of Planned Field Systems in Holderness, Yorkshire
• 10. Early Customary Tenures in Wales and Open-field Agriculture
• Bibliography
• Contributor
• Index