This paper examines the possible causes of damage to historic rammed earth structures based on a case study of a medieval and later building, formerly a preceptory of the Military Orders, in the village of Ambel in Aragon, north-east Spain. Structural and water-based mechanisms of damage are reviewed and an engineering basis for the cause of damage is proposed. Since a number of repair strategies have already been attempted on this structure, their effectiveness is also discussed. A four storey granary at the north-east corner of the preceptory complex is described in detail since it encapsulates many damage mechanisms and repair strategies which are common to historic rammed earth. The granary tower has a random rubble foundation, which is probably in part the remains of previous building, with rammed earth walls for the three storeys above. This rammed earth was originally rendered and scored to imitate fired brick but almost all of this has now fallen away. The gable end of the building has fired brick quoins, and now leans outwards slightly at the head of the wall. There is evidence of water damage because the building was neglected in the past, though not enough to initiate collapse. Structural and water based damage mechanisms are identified, and example repair strategies used at Ambel are described.

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The Shapwick Project, Somerset, began in 1989 as a ten-year, multidisciplinary landscape investigation focused upon the evolution of early and late medieval settlement patterns. This interim paper reviews the work carried out to 1996 and summarizes the results of archaeological fieldwork, standing building recording and documentary study. It is argued that the site of the present village and the medieval field system were planned in the late Saxon period and replaced a scatter of dispersed farmsteads, many of which show continuity from the prehistoric and Roman periods. The role of the medieval and post-medieval landscape is emphasized in reflecting and reinforcing social structure.

The Moncayo Archaeological Survey (MAS) was initiated in 2000 to investigate population, economic and environmental change in a study area northwest of Zaragoza in the northeast of Spain. This is an interdisciplinary project which combines landscape archaeology with earth-science methodologies and approaches. Research undertaken during the first four field seasons has concentrated on reconstructing and explaining landscape change, while at the same time cataloguing existing archaeological records and prospecting for previously unknown sites. Two episodes of significant landscape change dating to the Neolithic/Bronze Age and post-medieval period have been identified from the geomorphological record. These are interpreted here as the result of human land-use change: in the prehistoric period from clearance of woodland during the Neolithic and the subsequent expansion of agriculture in the Bronze Age, and in the 19th century from the removal of upland woodland following changes in land ownership and management. Notably, evidence for erosion and deposition was not found for either the Roman or medieval periods when archaeological and historical evidence indicate that local population was at its highest and agriculture at its most intense, nor from the height of the Little Ice Age when climate is thought to have been at its most extreme. Therefore, direct relationships between the intensity of agriculture or climate change and landscape modification are rejected here in favour of a more complex interaction of multiple human and climatic variables. These can only be understood by a combination of high-resolution archaeological survey, geoarchaeological study and chronometric dating.

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