Anglo-Saxon Settlements

The Anglo-Saxon period, once termed "the dark ages", can now be seen to have been one of the most formative periods in English history. During the seven centuries that elapsed after the collapse of Roman Britain, changes took place which laid the foundation of the culture and natural environment of the Middle Ages. The English landscape began to assume its medieval outline. Large areas of the chalklands of southern Britain, once heavily cultivated, became open downland. Thick woodland survived or regenerated over parts of the southern counties and midlands, and pastoral landscapes began to characterize much of the north and the west. In the most intensively cultivated regions, the typical nucleated English village began to be established and form the network of parishes and counties that remained almost unaltered for nine hundred years. With the coming of Christianity, a pattern of monasteries, abbeys and churches accelerated the development of larger settlements that frequently became the market towns of later periods. This volume of new essays by historians, archaeologists and geographers shows that a clear picture of Anglo-Saxon settlement is now emerging.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Later Anglo-Saxon England. DELLA HOOKE; 1. Pre-Conquest: Territorial and administrative organization in east Suffolk. PETER WARNER, Lecturer in History, Homerton College, Cambridge; 2. Minster churches in the landscape. JOHN BLAIR, Lecturer in History, The Queen's College, Oxford OXl 4QW; 3. Towards a chronology for English place-names. MARGARET GELLING, Lecturer, Department of Archaeology, University of Birmingham; 4. Towards a model of Anglo-Scandinavian rural settlement in England. TIM UNWIN, Lecturer, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway & Bedford New College; 5. The late Saxon countryside - villages and their fields. DAVID HALL; 6. Regional variation in southern and central England in the Anglo-Saxon period and its relationship to land units and settlement. DELLA HOOKE; 7. Settlement chronology and regional landscapes: the evidence from the claylands of East Anglia and Essex. TOM WILLIAMSON, Lecturer, Centre of East Anglian Studies, University of East Anglia; 8. Countryside and town: the animal resources of Saxon Southampton. JENNIFER BOURDILLON, Faunal Remains Unit, Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton; 9. Towns as structures and functioning communities through time: the development of central places from 600 to 1066. DAVID HILL, Department of Extra Mural Studies, University of Manchester; 10. The Anglo-Saxon towns of Kent. TIM TATTON-BROWN; 11. The making of Domesday York. RICHARD HALL, Lecturer, University of York; 12. Settlement structures and settlement systems of the Frankish central state in Carolingian and Ottonian times (8th to 10th centuries). HANS-JURGEN NITZ, Professor, Geographisches Institut, Universitat Gottingen; 13. Systems of agriculture in Central Europe up to the tenth and eleventh centuries. HELMUT HILDEBRANDT, Professor, Geographisches Institut, Universitat Mainz; 14. Anglo-Saxon England and the origins of the modern world economy. RICHARD HODGES, Lecturer, Department of Archaeology & Prehistory, University of Sheffield.