The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

Middle Ages: rural settlement and manors
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have resulted in the survival of waterlogged or charred timbers. In general, scientific methods
have had only a limited impact on medieval archaeology in the field, although undeniably, and as
with sites of all periods, they assume a much greater importance in the laboratory when finds are
subject to microscopic study and analysis. Techniques that are routinely used outdoors include
archaeomagnetic dating, where burnt clay features such as kilns, ovens and hearths are encountered,
but rarely radiocarbon dating because the very broad date brackets do not offer a ‘tighter’ date
than that given by, say, pottery.
A medieval villager lived in a landscape of whose administrative complexity he was probably
more aware than his modern-day equivalent. Each Sunday he would go to the church of his
parish, the place where ultimately he would be buried. To that church he owed a tenth—a tithe—
of all he produced on his holding, whether it be grain, hay or lambs. Once in a while, especially if
doing duty as churchwarden, he might see the archdeacon, representative of the bishop and the
greater Church beyond. During his life he would undoubtedly occasionally become aware of
other systems of administration: of royal officials such as the county sheriff, tax collectors and
travelling justices; of the county Quarter Sessions where, from the later fourteenth century, Justices
of the Peace dealt with matters including murder, assault and riot; of the county coroner to
whom matters including suspicious deaths and discoveries of treasure had to be reported; of the
Church’s courts for those accused of moral and ecclesiastical offences; and of Forest courts, to
which those who lived in the extensive areas deemed forest came if charged with poaching deer,
damaging trees, or bringing land into cultivation without permission.
The administrative unit most familiar to the villager, however, was the manor. Essentially this
was the estate on which he lived and held his land. To its owner, the lord of the manor, in return
for his holding he owed a money rent or labour services, that is a set number of days’ work on the
lord’s own land. Although there were considerable variations both regionally and over time in the
classes of peasantry and their obligations, by and large a distinction can be made between those
who were ‘free’—that is those, usually the minority, who owed only a money rent for their holding
and in whose lives the lord had relatively little opportunity to interfere—and those servile tenants
who were obliged to do labour services and who, at least in theory, often held their farm only
during their own lifetime, after which it passed back to the lord to be reallotted. In many parts of
the country, such men were called ‘copyholders’, that is they held their house and land according
to an agreement made in the manor court of which they received a written copy. Such courts,
termed ‘courts baron’, were held at regular intervals, perhaps monthly, and were at the heart of
rural life. For here not only was the surrender and transfer of holdings dealt with but also the
regulation of agricultural land and the appointment of officials. Those might include a hayward
to look after fences and the manor’s grazing land and, most importantly, a reeve, responsible for
collecting any dues owed to the lord and acting as the main channel of communications between
the lord and his tenants.
Parish and manor were therefore entirely separate: the first was the territory that supported a
church through the payment of tithes, while the second was a lay estate comprising the land of
the lord and that of his tenants. Both varied greatly in size and complexity, and many parishes,
especially those established earlier rather than later in the era of parish formation in the later
Saxon period, contained several manors. That having been said, it was perhaps commonest for
parish and manor to be co-extensive—that is to have the same boundaries—reflecting the origin
of so many parish churches as the private or estate chapel of a local lord.
Those frameworks, an appreciation of which is essential for the student of medieval society,
have long been well understood; they survived little changed until the earlier nineteenth century
and have been, and remain, the subject of intensive enquiry by historians. What then has
archaeology to contribute to the study of rural settlement?