The open fields of England describes the system of agriculture that operated in medieval England before the establishment of present-day hedged farms surrounded by hedges or walls. The volume encompasses a wide range of primary data not previously assembled, to which are added the results of new research based upon a fifty-year study of open-field remains and their related documents. The whole of England is examined, describing eight different kinds of field-systems that have been identified and relating them to their associated land-use and settlement. Details of field structure are explained such as the demesne, the lord’s land, and the tenants’ holdings, as well as tenurial arrangements and farming methods. Previous explanations of open-field origins and possible antecedents to medieval fields are discussed. Various types of archaeological and historical evidence relevant to Saxon-period settlements and fields are presented, followed by the development of a new theory to explain the lay-out and planned nature of many field systems found in the central belt of England. A summary and suggestions for future research conclude the text. The numerous maps and photographs illustrate the contrasting complexities of different field systems. Of particular interest is the Gazetteer, which is organized by historic counties. Each county has a summary of its fields, including tabulated data and sources for future research, touching on the demesne, yardland size, work-service, assarts, and the physical remains of ridge and furrow. The Gazetteer acts as a national hand-list of field systems, opening the subject up to further research, and will prove essential to scholars of medieval agriculture.

The Swedish village by-laws are a collection of rules for coexistence in a village which evolved during the 18th and 19th centuries. The dissertation takes its starting point in an edition of Byordningar från Mälarlänen (Village By-Laws in the Lake Mälar districts) containing about 400 by-laws from the central part of Sweden, and is a limited review of that edition at the same time as it gives a systematic survey of certain aspects specified in the by-laws. These aspects were added as the result of an official proposal in 1742 containing a model on how a by-law should be constructed. The question is asked whether the directives of the Government were formulated when they reached the local level, or whether they were redesigned and adapted to suit the local situation. The village by-laws in the Mälar counties differ in form and in content depending upon the official proposal on by-laws from 1742. The village by-laws were originally discussed in connection with the changes in agriculture, and thus concerned such sectors as farming methods, fencing, grazing, the right to certain proportions of the village's resources. The local conditions in the village are reflected in, for example, the rules on the length of the grass for grazing. There were different kinds of such by-laws, e.g., by-laws for individual villages and by-laws for parishes (approved at a parish meeting). The initiative of the Government in requiring village by-laws gave different results in different counties. Large parts of Uppsala county are without forest land. The fences and the system of enclosing fields are therefore of particular interest in a discussion on the village by-laws. I have demonstrated that their origin and acceptance in Swedish villages and parishes can be placed in political, chronological, social and functional contexts. / <p>Diss. Uppsala : Univ.</p>

This thesis examines the effects the imposition of Anglo-Norman lordship, following the Anglo-Norman expansion into Wales in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, had upon the landscape of the Welsh border region. In order to achieve this aim this project makes extensive use of digital Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in order to produce a detailed county-wide study of the landscape of post-Conquest Monmouthshire as well as comprehensive case studies of individual Anglo-Norman lordships contained within the boundaries of the county. This thesis also aims to locate its findings within important current debates in historic archaeology about the effects of medieval lordship upon the landscape, on the roles of the physical environment and human agency in the forming of the historic landscape, on the wider role of castles as lordship centres, beyond simple military functionality.