Recognizing and Moving on from a Failed Paradigm: The Case of Agricultural Landscapes in Anglo-Saxon England c. AD 400–800

Abstract

Understanding how and why material culture changes is a central preoccupation for archaeologists. One of the most intractable examples of this problem can be found between 400 and 800 AD in the enigmatic transformation of sub Roman into Anglo-Saxon England. That example lies at the heart of this review, explored through the case of the agricultural economy. Although the ideas critically examined below relate specifically to early medieval England, they represent themes of universal interest: the role of migration in the transformation of material culture; politics and economy in a post-imperial world; the significance of "core" and "periphery" in evolving polities; ethnogenesis as a strategy in kingdom building; property rights as a lens for investigating cultural change; and the relationship between hierarchical political structures and collective forms of governance. The first part of the argument presented below proposes a structured response to paradigmatic stalemate by identifying and testing each underlying assumption, premise and interpretative framework. The recognition of any fallacies, false premises and flawed arguments might assist with an overall evaluation of the continuing utility of a discourse-whether it has life in it yet, or should be set aside. In either case, the recognition of its structure should enable arguments to be developed that do not lead into a disciplinary cul-de-sac, prevented by the orthodoxy from exploring new avenues for research. The second part of the review deliberately adopts a starting point outside the limits of the current discourse. Freed from the confines of the conventional consensus, it experiments with an alternative "bottom up" approach to change in early medieval England that contrasts with conventional "top down" arguments. It focuses in particular on how rights over agricultural property-especially collective rights-and the forms of governance implied by them may assist in illuminating the roles of tradition and transformation in effecting cultural change.

The Ancient Origins of Medieval Fields: A Reassessment

“…Oosthuizen has recently argued for large-scale continuity from the Roman period, into the Middle Ages, not only of field systems but of the systems of property rights with which these were associated. She has even gone so far as to suggest that open-field agriculture itself may have had prehistoric or Roman origins (Oosthuizen 2016). If, however, systems of land allotment really had displayed this kind of stability it should be far more obvious in the layout of the medieval and modern landscape.…”

“…Subsequent research elsewhere in the country revealed many landscapes with similar attributes -large-scale cohesion and/or a non-comformable relationship with Roman military roads or early linear earthworks -which either survived as hedged fields or, more rarely, were documented on early maps as patterns of open-field furlongs. Examples were published from parts of Norfolk and Suffolk (Williamson 1987;Davison 1990;Hesse 1992); western and south-eastern Cambridgeshire (Oosthuizen 1998(Oosthuizen , 2003(Oosthuizen and 2006Harrison 2002); north-west Essex (Bassett 1982, 4-9); Lincolnshire (Bassett 1985); the dipslope of the Chiltern Hills in Hertfordshire (Williamson 2010); the London clay uplands in the south-east of that county (Hunn 2004;Bryant et al 2005); and the Arrow valley of Shropshire, around Hergest and Lyonshall (White 2003, 37-47;73-75). Most of these landscapes displayed a distinctive 'coaxial' form -that is, they had a dominant 'grain' -with axes running for much longer distances in one direction than another, so that they resembled in plan rather wavy and irregular brickwork (Illus.…”

Anthropological Archaeology in 2016: Cooperation and Collaborations in Archaeological Research and Practice

“…Likewise, Susan Oosthuizen () looks at collective property rights in her article, “Recognizing and Moving on from a Failed Paradigm: The Case of Agricultural Landscapes in Anglo‐Saxon England c. AD 400–800,” to challenge the dominant models of change of post‐Roman Imperial England. She argues that collective property regimes, in which common‐rights holders are equal members and managers of common lands, were not an invention of the Anglo‐Saxon era but had a long history throughout prehistoric and Roman periods.…”

Beyond hierarchy: archaeology, common rights and social identity

“…This is not to say that such explanations are never viable. However, where evidence to support them is lacking, it makes sense to adopt the most straightforward interpretation of the absence of that evidencethat rights of common property and the CPrRs that governed them were, more often that not, characterized by continuity as they adapted to new circumstances across the longue durée (Oosthuizen 2016b). There is an intuitive sense to this conclusion since agricultural subsistence from one year to the next depended at least in part on the continuous exploitation of such resources.…”