The year 1066 has been regarded traditionally as a great divide in English history, an apparent break with the past which has gained even greater status recently as historians have pushed back the origins of English society to earlier and earlier medieval generations.

Further than 1066 it is difficult to go, for this marks the point beyond which the English peasantry cannot be identified from written sources. Archaeology, however, concerned as it is mainly with small farms and simple town dwellings, has yielded a wealth of data on life in pre-Conquest England, opening a vista on the...