The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 260 • Paul Stamper
replanning: the imposition in the first half of the tenth century of a new local administrative
organization following the reconquest of the Danelaw by Wessex. This established the hundred
as the standard local unit of administration and the hide, nominally 48 ha, as the basic unit on
which fiscal and military obligations were based. Newly divided up, the landscape then became ‘a
record in itself of dues; a regional imposition for national administrative purposes’. This revelation
of a great replanning of the countryside in the late Saxon period, at least equal to that which
followed the enclosures of a millennium later, is one of the great discoveries of British archaeology
of the later twentieth century.
Just as methodological advances have led to a better understanding of the lowland agricultural
landscapes of the Middle Ages, so they are likewise beginning to unravel the stone walled
countryside of upland areas. At Roystone Grange, in the White Peak of Derbyshire, a multiperiod
landscape criss-crossed with dry stone walls of various prehistoric to post-medieval dates, careful
examination of wall types, and of their relationship to each other and to dated features and sites,
has allowed the reconstruction of the local countryside at different times. One phase of walling,
for instance, seems to relate to the establishment of a Cistercian grange—a monastic farm—at
Roystone in the later twelfth century, while a later one apparently dates from the enclosure of the
moorland c.1600 (Hodges 1991, ch. 2). Similarly, work in the Lakeland valleys for the National
Trust has been equally successful in identifying several phases of walling, which has in turn led to
the ascription of functions to the different zones of field. The most significant type of wall, the
head dykes or ring garths that run continuously along the valleys, separating the cultivated land
from the rough pastures above, is now seen as having been established here in the eleventh or
twelfth century.
INDUSTRY
Over the last generation, a much better understanding of medieval industry has been arrived at,
largely through the application of what may broadly be termed archaeological techniques, including,
alongside excavation, the study of industrial landscapes and the scientific and technical studies
of objects, by-products and residues (Blair and Ramsay 1991). With the iron industry, for instance
(Geddes 1991), it can now be seen that by the twelfth century ore was having to be got via
tunnels, trenches and bell pits, presumably because the easily available surface deposits had been
worked out. While there were few changes in smelting techniques between the Romano-British
period and the late Middle Ages, blast furnaces were introduced from abroad in the late fifteenth
century. Newbridge, Sussex, is the earliest known; Henry VIII commissioned cast-iron ordnance
from here in 1496, and within a short time the product range included domestic items such as
firedogs, fire backs and tomb slabs. Water-powered forges, where a water wheel was used to drive
bellows and hammers, appeared earlier, the first example being set up at Chingley, Kent, in the
early fourteenth century. Archaeology has also shown, in excavations at Bordesley Abbey,
Worcestershire, how water power was harnessed from the late twelfth century to provide power
in a smithy housed in a mill equipped with wooden cogs and stone bearings (Astill 1993). While
relatively few smithies have yet been excavated, the microscopic analysis of slags and hammer
scales seems likely to enable a far fuller understanding both of the spatial organization within
individual complexes and of the techniques employed there. The gradual advances in iron-working
technologies were reflected in the ever-broader range of iron and steel goods manufactured,
some advances at least being demand-led. The clergy, for instance, needed accurate time-keeping
devices, and between 1280 and 1300 iron horologia begin to be mentioned; the earliest surviving
example is that of 1386 in Salisbury Cathedral (Geddes 1991, 178–179).