By the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066, England’s population was again comparable to that of Roman Britain and included sizeable urban centres. By 1200, England was more densely populated than ever before. Such population growth was also seen in much of Europe. It drove the expansion of towns and markets as well as the rise of lordship, and was fed by an expansion of cereal farming which, in many places, involved on a fundamental reorganization of the countryside and communities. The social, economic and demographic consequences of this reorganization were so far-reaching, it has been described as an ‘agricultural revolution’. At the heart of this project is the question, how and when was this revolution achieved? FeedSax will effect a breakthrough in understanding this critical period in Europe’s agricultural history by generating the first direct evidence for the conditions in which crops were grown, from the remains of plants and animals from archaeological sites.
The timing and causes of this ‘cerealisation’ of Europe have long been debated, with arguments focusing on the origins of open fields. Such fields were communally cultivated, requiring collective decision-making (especially re crop rotation) and pooling costly resources such as mouldboard ploughs and teams of oxen. Communal management of fields meant that peasant households had to live close together, giving rise to the 'nucleated' villages that remain a feature of much of the English landscape. Fields thus created communities. The spread of open fields laid the foundations of the modern countryside in many regions and was one of the transformative changes of the Middle Ages, yet theories about when and how this kind of farming emerged and spread are based on limited evidence. FeedSax breaks new ground by by deploying scientific methods along with the study of archaeological remains of farms to resolve this problem. The fact that the surpluses generated by cereal farming gave rise in England to local landowners (lords) and growing wealth inequalities, and that this 'agricultural revolution' took place against a backdrop of climatic warming (the 'Medieval Climate Anomaly'), gives the project contemporary relevance.
The overall aim is to generate direct evidence for the conditions in which medieval crops were grown by means of the following:
i. Analysis of the molecular composition of preserved (charred) cereal grains. This enables us to establish if crops were grown in rotation; whether fertility was boosted by manuring; and the types of soils in which crops were grown.
ii. The weeds that grew amongst the crops are also being used as indicators of whether crops were being manured; sowing times; etc.
iii. Cattle that pulled the heavy plough associated with the expansion of cultivation onto heavier, more productive soils, were more likely to develop certain pathologies that leave visible traces on their skeletons. Cattle bones are being systematically examined for such pathologies.
iv. Pollen analysis is revealing the extent to which pasture was replaced by arable fields.
