Proceedings of the Society's conference held at the University of York in April 2002.
This book brings together the papers presented at the Society for Medieval Archaeology's spring conference held in York in 2002. The conference set out to reunite urban and rural archaeology. Papers define the differences between town and country, compare the two ways of life, trace the interconnecting links between townspeople and country dwellers, and show how they interacted and influenced one another. Contributors include archaeologists concerned with artefacts, buildings, environment and regions,...

Lords and Peasants in a Changing Society is a history of the large Church estate of Worcester from its foundation until the Reformation, and is a full-length study of an estate centred in the West Midlands. The medieval bishops of Worcester were landed magnates with manors scattered over three counties, from the outskirts of Bristol to north Worcestershire. This study uses the plentiful records of the bishopric to define and explain long-term social and economic changes in this section of the medieval countryside. Attention is divided equally between the economy of the lords and developments...

This volume of essays in honour of Professor R. H. Hilton is presented by some of his numerous friends and pupils. It attempts to reflect his wide-ranging interests while highlighting certain themes and preserving some distinct degree of unity. The essays illustrate his abiding concern with the social structure, the rural economy and the mentalite of the Middle Ages. They also indicate that his interests have have always been pursued with the use of the widest possible range of sources so that archaeological and literary evidence are employed, as in his own work, alongside the sources more...

A striking and famous feature of the English landscape, Dartmoor (in the southwest of the country) is a beautiful place, with a sense of wildness and mystery. But in the Middle Ages intensive practical use was made of its resources: its extensive moorlands provided summer pasture for thousands of cattle from the Devon lowlands, which flowed in a seasonal tide, up in the spring and down in the autumn.

This book describes, for the first time, the social organization and farming practices associated with that annual transfer of livestock. It presents evidence for a previously unsuspected...