Medieval Settlement Research 36

An obituary for Christopher Taylor

A paper providing an overview of results from development-driven fieldwork in medieval settlements in central and north-east Wales since 1996. An assessment is made of the impact of this work on understanding, and potential priorities for improvements in the future.

Across Scotland’s eastern mainland, evidence of early medieval settlement is varied and diffuse. Structural remains have proven particularly elusive, and our understanding of the relationship between sites, and the function of settlements in general, remains limited. Preservation has played a major role in the creation of this record and whilst contributing factors are routinely identified at the site-level, efforts to assess their prevalence have been virtually non-existent. Through a review of excavation literature, this paper collates evidence for the major factors impacting the survival of early medieval settlement remains and considers how such factors have influenced our interpretation of the archaeological record to date. The study then looks at the future of these sites in the wake of climate change and considers what techniques and strategies we may use to try and overcome the current theoretical and methodological hurdles.

Charred plant remains from the South Manor site - at the excavated medieval settlement of Wharram Percy, Yorkshire - were radiocarbon-dated by the Feeding Anglo-Saxon England project. These new radiocarbon dates suggest that a crop processing oven previously associated with the twelfth- to thirteenth-century manorial phase is now most plausibly dated to the late tenth century, and also that crops were probably being processed in the vicinity of a black loam layer by the ninth century. This evidence could indicate 'high status' and/or specialised activity in this ninth- to tenth-century phase.

A summary of the CARE project in 2020, a European project of test pit excavations in currently occupied rural settlements spanning the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Poland and the UK.

Book reviews relevant to medieval settlement and landscape