Landscape, Community And Colonisation: The North Somerset Levels During the 1st to 2nd Millennia AD (Cba Research Report)

With contributions by Nigel Cameron, Paul Davies, Simon Dobinson, Rowena Gale, Alejandra Gutiérrez, Sheila Hamilton-Dyer, Jen Heathcote, Colin Humphreys, Julie Jones, Amanda Kear, Annette Kreiser, Alan Outram, Richard Parker, the late David Richards, Jane Timby, Heather Tinsley, and Ciorstaidh Trevarthen. From 1993, the North Somerset Levels Project sought to investigate the origins and development of this area of reclaimed coastal marshland during the first and second millennia AD. The inter-disciplinary approach taken has added archaeological (survey and excavation) data, palaeoenvironmental evidence, studies of documentary sources, architecture, cartography and field- and place-names, to what was already known about the historic landscape. This report, which publishes the findings of the project, examines local and regional changes and variations in the landscape, focusing on two major phases of exploitation, modification and transformation during the Roman and medieval periods. Factors such as agriculture, grazing, salt production, fishing, draining, flood defence, and the establishment of settlements, roads, commons, field systems, as well as cultural factors, are all discussed, as evidence from the local area is placed within a wider regional context. An excellent study which exemplifies all that is new and exciting in landscape study. List of abbreviations viii List of illustrations ix List of tables xi Acknowledgements xiii List of contributors xiv Summary xv Glossary xix Part 1: Understanding the history of a landscape 1. Introduction: a marshland community and its landscape 3 2. Researching the origins and development of an historic landscape 17 Part 2: Late prehistoric and Romano-British landscape 3. The wetland wilderness: the late prehistoric and Romano-British environment 33 4. Landscape modification and transformation in the late Iron Age and Roman period 42 5. The Romano-British landscape reconstructed and in context 64 Part 3: The making of the historic landscape 6. Created on a cleaned slate: a characterisation of the historic landscape 85 7. Of kings, bishops and knights: the social and tenurial context of landscape change 126 8. Peasants and yeomen: the tenements and houses of a marshland community 149 9. The evolution of a marshland settlement: Puxton — ‘summer dike’, village and hamlet 190 10. The medieval and post-medieval environment and economy of Puxton: palaeoenvironmental reports 229 Part 4: Discussion and conclusions 11. Changing environment and economy in the 1st and 2nd millennia AD 251 12. Changing patterns of wetland utilisation in context 267 References 280 Bibliography 285 Index 302 CD: Tables and figures (58 pp.) Oxbow says: From 1993, the North Somerset Levels Project sought to investigate the origins and development of this area of reclaimed coastal marshland during the first and second millennia AD. The inter-disciplinary approach taken has added archaeological (survey and excavation) data, palaeoenvironmental evidence, studies of documentary sources, architecture, cartography and field- and place-names, to what was already known about the historic landscape. This report, which publishes the findings of the project, examines local and regional changes and variations in the landscape, focusing on two major phases of exploitation, modification and transformation during the Roman and medieval periods. Factors such as agriculture, grazing, salt production, fishing, draining, flood defence, and the establishment of settlements, roads, commons, field systems, as well as cultural factors, are all discussed, as evidence from the local area is placed within a wider regional context. An excellent study which exemplifies all that is new and exciting in landscape study. Written by Stephen Rippon, this is a study in how past human communities have shaped the countryside of today. Its range embraces the Romano-British, medieval & post-medieval periods, while the sources & techniques used to unravel the history of this landscape embrace field archaeology & much more