Peasant Perceptions of Landscape marks a change in the discipline of landscape history, as well as making a major contribution to the history of everyday life. Until now, there has been no sustained analysis of how ordinary medieval and early modern people experienced and perceived their
material environment and constructed their identities in relation to the places where they lived. This volume provides exactly such an analysis by examining peasant perceptions in one geographical area over the long period from AD 500 to 1650.
The study takes as its focus Ewelme hundred, a well-documented and archaeologically-rich area of lowland vale and hilly Chiltern wood-pasture comprising fourteen ancient parishes. The analysis draws on a range of sources including legal depositions and thousands of field-names and bynames preserved
in largely unpublished deeds and manorial documents. Archaeology makes a major contribution, particularly for understanding the period before 900, but more generally in reconstructing the fabric of villages and the framework for inhabitants' spatial practices and experiences. In its focus on the way
inhabitants interacted with the landscape in which they worked, prayed, and socialised, Peasant Perceptions of Landscape supplies a new history of the lives and attitudes of the bulk of the rural population who so seldom make their mark in traditional landscape analysis or documentary history.
Author(s): Stephen Mileson, Stuart Brookes
Series: Medieval History and Archaeology
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 384
City: Oxford
Cover
Peasant Perceptions of Landscape: Ewelme Hundred, South Oxfordshire, 500–1650
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Abbreviations
1: Introduction
2: Geography and Sources
The Geographical Foundations
Archaeology
Documents
3: The Early to Middle Anglo-Saxon Period, 500–800
Introduction
Structures and Structural Change
Power and identity
The inhabitants
Settlement and economy
Late seventh- and eighth-century developments
Perceptions
Belonging
Conclusion
4: The Late Anglo-Saxon Period, 800–1100
Introduction
Structures and Structural Change
Open fields
Villages
Wallingford: a stronghold against the Vikings
Hundredal administration
Urbanization and inter-regionalconnections
Perceptions
Social space
Belonging
Conclusion
5: The High Middle Ages, 1100–1350
Introduction
Structures and Structural Change
Agricultural developments
Settlement size and layout
Trade networks and outside contacts
Social structure
Perceptions
Social space
Making meaning in the landscape
Belonging
Conclusion
6: The Late Middle Ages, 1350–1530
Introduction
Structures and Structural Change
Perceptions
Social space
Making meaning in the landscape
Belonging
Conclusion
7: The Early Modern Period, 1530–1650
Introduction
Structures and Structural Change
Perceptions
Social space
Making meaning in the landscape
Belonging
Conclusion
8: Conclusion
Bibliography
Manuscripts and Original Documents
All Souls College, Oxford
Berkshire Record Office
Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
British Library, London
Canterbury Cathedral
Christ Church, Oxford
Claydon House
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Exeter College, Oxford
Hampshire Record Office
Historic England Archive
King’s College, Cambridge
Magdalen College, Oxford
Merton College, Oxford
NMR
Northamptonshire Record Office
Oxfordshire History Centre
St George’s Chapel, Windsor
St John’s College, Oxford
St Joseph Collection, Cambridge University
TNA, Kew
Wiltshire and Swindon Archives
Printed Primary Sources
Secondary Works
Index
