|
Showing 1 - 5 of
5 matches in All Departments
The village of Faxton in Northamptonshire was only finally deserted
in the second half of the 20th century. Shortly afterwards, between
1966 and 1968, its medieval crofts were investigated under the
direction of archaeologist Lawrence Butler. At the time this was
one of the most ambitious excavations of a deserted medieval
settlement to have been conducted and, although the results were
only published as interim reports and summaries, Butler's
observations at Faxton were to have significant influence on the
growing academic and popular literature about village origins and
desertion and the nature of medieval peasant crofts and buildings.
In contrast to regions with abundant building stone, Faxton
revealed archaeological evidence of a long tradition of earthen
architecture in which so-called 'mud-walling' was successfully
combined with other structural materials. The 'rescue' excavations
at Faxton were originally promoted by the Deserted Medieval Village
Research Group and funded by the Ministry of Public Buildings and
Works after the extensive earthworks at the site came under threat
from agriculture. Three areas were excavated covering seven crofts.
In 1966 Croft 29 at the south-east corner of the village green
revealed a single croft in detail with its barns, yards and corn
driers; in 1967 four crofts were examined together in the
north-west corner of the village in an area badly damaged by recent
ploughing and, finally, an area immediately east of the church was
opened up in 1968. In all, some 4000m2 were investigated in 140
days over three seasons. The post-excavation process for Faxton was
beset by delay. Of the 12 chapters presented in this monograph,
only two were substantially complete at the time of the director's
death in 2014. The others have had to be pieced together from
interim summaries, partial manuscripts, sound recordings,
handwritten notes and on-site records. Building on this evidence, a
new team of scholars have re-considered the findings in order to
set the excavations at Faxton into the wider context of modern
research. Their texts reflect on the settlement's disputed
pre-Conquest origins, probable later re-planning and expansion, the
reasons behind the decline and abandonment of the village, the
extraordinary story behind the destruction of its church, the
development of the open fields and the enclosure process, as well
as new evidence about Faxton's buildings and the finds discovered
there. Once lauded, then forgotten, the excavations at Faxton now
make a new contribution to our knowledge of medieval life and
landscape in the East Midlands.
The village of Faxton in Northamptonshire was only finally deserted
in the second half of the 20th century. Shortly afterwards, between
1966 and 1968, its medieval crofts were investigated under the
direction of archaeologist Lawrence Butler. At the time this was
one of the most ambitious excavations of a deserted medieval
settlement to have been conducted and, although the results were
only published as interim reports and summaries, Butler's
observations at Faxton were to have significant influence on the
growing academic and popular literature about village origins and
desertion and the nature of medieval peasant crofts and buildings.
In contrast to regions with abundant building stone, Faxton
revealed archaeological evidence of a long tradition of earthen
architecture in which so-called 'mud-walling' was successfully
combined with other structural materials. The 'rescue' excavations
at Faxton were originally promoted by the Deserted Medieval Village
Research Group and funded by the Ministry of Public Buildings and
Works after the extensive earthworks at the site came under threat
from agriculture. Three areas were excavated covering seven crofts.
In 1966 Croft 29 at the south-east corner of the village green
revealed a single croft in detail with its barns, yards and corn
driers; in 1967 four crofts were examined together in the
north-west corner of the village in an area badly damaged by recent
ploughing and, finally, an area immediately east of the church was
opened up in 1968. In all, some 4000m2 were investigated in 140
days over three seasons. The post-excavation process for Faxton was
beset by delay. Of the 12 chapters presented in this monograph,
only two were substantially complete at the time of the director's
death in 2014. The others have had to be pieced together from
interim summaries, partial manuscripts, sound recordings,
handwritten notes and on-site records. Building on this evidence, a
new team of scholars have re-considered the findings in order to
set the excavations at Faxton into the wider context of modern
research. Their texts reflect on the settlement's disputed
pre-Conquest origins, probable later re-planning and expansion, the
reasons behind the decline and abandonment of the village, the
extraordinary story behind the destruction of its church, the
development of the open fields and the enclosure process, as well
as new evidence about Faxton's buildings and the finds discovered
there. Once lauded, then forgotten, the excavations at Faxton now
make a new contribution to our knowledge of medieval life and
landscape in the East Midlands.
An original and approachable account of how archaeology can tell
the story of the English village. Shapwick lies in the middle of
Somerset, next to the important monastic centre of Glastonbury: the
abbey owned the manor for 800 years from the 8th to the 16th
century and its abbots and officials had a great influence on the
lives of the peasants who lived there. It is possible that abbot
Dunstan, one of the great reformers of tenth century monasticism
directed the planning of the village. The Shapwick Project examined
the development and history of an English parish and village over a
ten thousand-year period. This was a truly multi-disciplinary
project. Not only were a battery of archaeological and historical
techniques explored - such as field walking, test-pitting,
archaeological excavation, aerial reconnaissance, documentary
research and cartographic analysis - but numerous other techniques
such as building analysis, dendrochronological dating and soil
analysis were undertaken on a large scale. The result is a
fascinating study about how the community lived and prospered in
Shapwick. In addition we learn how a group of enthusiastic and
dedicated scholars unravelled this story. As such there is much
here to inspire and enthuse others who might want to embark on a
landscape study of a parish or village area. Seven of the ten
chapters begin with a fictional vignette to bring the story of the
village to life. Text-boxes elucidate re-occurring themes and
techniques. Extensively illustrated in colour including 100 full
page images. This title was the winner of the 2014 British
Archaeological Association's Best Archaeological Book Award.
The Shapwick Project began in 1989 as a ten-year,
multi-disciplinary landscape investigation of the evolution of
early and late medieval settlement patterns. This volume sets out
the methods used in the exploration of this wetland-edge landscape
and summarises the long term micro-history of a community and its
lands from early prehistory to the present day. Shapwick was
granted to the abbey at Glastonbury in the first half of the 8th
century and, as a consequence, there are numerous later medieval
surveys, demesne accounts and court rolls. Together with an
unusually long sequence of post-medieval and modern maps, these
sources illuminate themes as diverse as building history and
farming practice. At the same time, aerial photography,
fieldwalking, shovel-pitting and topographical survey create a
picture of the distribution and date of archaeological monuments
across the parish while garden bed collections and test pitting are
used to evaluate the archaeology underlying the modern village.
Other innovative techniques described here include large-scale
geophysical survey and the geochemical techniques of heavy metal
analysis together with detailed surveys of historic buildings,
botany and hedgerow invertebrates. The results from these surveys
are at least as important as the excavations undertaken at sites of
prehistoric-to-19th-century date. Stratigraphies, chronologies and
features are all detailed in this volume, with important
collections of objects from prehistory to the end of the 19th
century and accompanying specialist reports which illuminate
environment and diet. Highlights include a combination of pollen
analysis and lithic distributions which add significantly to our
understanding of the context of prehistoric waterlogged trackways
within the peat zone, and striking evidence for the intensification
of settlement and land use in the later pre-Roman Iron Age and
later Roman period. The modern village was in existence by the 10th
century when a dispersed population was apparently re-housed in a
compact, nucleated village with open field systems to east and west
and various models for this process are debated. Among the later
medieval sites excavated are two manorial centres of Glastonbury
Abbey, industrial evidence, and well-preserved palaeoenvironmental
material. In the 18th and 19th centuries outlying farms were built
and the housing stock transformed at the same time as parts of the
village were emparked. This post-medieval and early modern evidence
is given equal weight in the volume.
The Middle Ages are all around us in Britain. The Tower of London
and the castles of Scotland and Wales are mainstays of cultural
tourism and an inspiring cross-section of later medieval finds can
now be seen on display in museums across England, Scotland, and
Wales. Medieval institutions from Parliament and monarchy to
universities are familiar to us and we come into contact with the
later Middle Ages every day when we drive through a village or
town, look up at the castle on the hill, visit a local church or
wonder about the earthworks in the fields we see from the window of
a train. The Oxford Handbook of Later Medieval Archaeology in
Britain provides an overview of the archaeology of the later Middle
Ages in Britain between AD 1066 and 1550. 61 entries, divided into
10 thematic sections, cover topics ranging from later medieval
objects, human remains, archaeological science, standing buildings,
and sites such as castles and monasteries, to the well-preserved
relict landscapes which still survive. This is a rich and exciting
period of the past and most of what we have learnt about the
material culture of our medieval past has been discovered in the
past two generations. This volume provides comprehensive coverage
of the latest research and describes the major projects and
concepts that are changing our understanding of our medieval
heritage.
|
|