Peasant perspectives on the Medieval landscape : a study of three communities / Susan Kilby.

Includes bibliographies and index.

This compelling new study forms part of a new wave of scholarship on the medieval rural environment in which the focus moves beyond purely socio-economic concerns to incorporate the lived experience of peasants. For too long, the principal intellectual approach has been to consider both subject and evidence from a modern, rationalist perspective and to afford greater importance to the social elite. New perspectives are needed. By re-evaluating the source material from the perspective of the peasant worldview, it is possible to build a far more detailed representation of rural peasant experience. Susan Kilby seeks to reconstruct the physical and socio-cultural environment of three contrasting English villages - Lakenheath in Suffolk, Castor in Northamptonshire and Elton in Huntingdonshire - between c. 1086 and c. 1348 and to use this as the basis for determining how peasants perceived their natural surroundings.

Front Cover -- Title Page -- Half Title -- Copyrigt -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of figures -- List of tables -- General Editor's preface -- Preface and acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- 1. Introduction -- Geographic scope -- Elton, Huntingdonshire -- Castor, Northamptonshire -- Lakenheath, Suffolk -- Sources -- 2. Understanding the seigneurial landscape -- From inclusive to exclusive? Seigneurial perceptions of rural settlement in the later Anglo-Saxon period -- Conspicuous display and veiled privacy: from the Norman Conquest to the Black Death -- 3. Ordering the landscape

Organising the landscape of the medieval vill: seigneurial and peasant zones -- Encountering the built environment: rural peasant dwellings -- Delineating peasant space within the medieval manor -- Off the beaten track: the hidden morphology of the rural landscape -- 4. The unseen landscape -- Understanding topographical bynames -- Knowing your place: contrasting peasant landscapes within medieval manors? -- Mapping topographical bynames: Norman Cross hundred -- Aboveton: from indicator of place to socially constructed landscape

Mapping topographical bynames: Huntingdonshire -- the bigger picture -- Conclusions: personal status and topographical bynames -- 5. Naming the landscape -- Reassessing minor medieval landscape names -- Ordering field and furlong -- Distinguishing field and furlong -- The natural environment -- The supernatural environment -- Looking backward: naming the landscape -- The dynamics of landscape naming: cultural names -- 6. The remembered landscape -- Beyond taxonomy: the secret life of the fields -- 7. The economic landscape -- The rural environment as an economic resource: the demesne

The rural environment as an economic resource: peasant arable production -- Hidden peasant economies: fishing -- Hidden peasant economies: sheep farming -- Conclusions -- hidden peasant economies -- 8. Managing the landscape -- Waste not, want not: the natural world as a resource -- As common as muck: keeping the land in good heart -- Scientific fields: peasants and medieval science -- Ten men went to mow: managing medieval meadowland -- Mires, mores and meres: managing fenland resources -- A ditch in time: managing drainage and water resources -- Conclusions -- managing the landscape

9. Conclusion -- Unveiling the peasant environment -- Living in rural communities -- Social status reconsidered -- Detecting peasant agency -- Memory and history in the rural landscape -- Making a living in rural England -- Peasant perspectives on the medieval landscape: concluding thoughts -- Bibliography -- Index

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