Drawing Conclusions From Analysis of Field Systems
Fields were organised for the convenience of the farmer - both arable and pastoral. Therefore the size of fields often gives an indication of the type of agriculture and agricultural implements in use when they were established. The shape and orientation of collections of fields provides clues about the date they were established. Field systems can give an indication of land ownership and social structure. The extent to which the field system respects other features (or not) can be used as dating evidence for the other features or the field system itself. For example, a field system that doesn't respect a Roman road is likely to predate it. Similarly, a feature that respects medieval ridge and furrow is likely to post date it.
The Rodings (the largest group of parishes in England to bear a common name) was investigated by Steven Basset. Basset showed that a broadly rectilinear field system (and other features such as roads) continued across parish boundaries thus showing that the field system pre-dated the formation of parishes. He therefore concluded that they had originally been a single estate.
Read more about this topic: Field System
Famous quotes containing the words drawing, conclusions, analysis, field and/or systems:
“When a subject is highly controversial ... one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgement.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“Whatever else American thinkers do, they psychologize, often brilliantly. The trouble is that psychology only takes us so far. The new interest in families has its merits, but it will have done us all a disservice if it turns us away from public issues to private matters. A vision of things that has no room for the inner life is bankrupt, but a psychology without social analysis or politics is both powerless and very lonely.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)
“The woman ... turned her melancholy tone into a scolding one. She was not very young, and the wrinkles in her face were filled with drops of water which had fallen from her eyes, which, with the yellowness of her complexion, made a figure not unlike a field in the decline of the year, when the harvest is gathered in and a smart shower of rain has filled the furrows with water. Her voice was so shrill that they all jumped into the coach as fast as they could and drove from the door.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“No civilization ... would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change. Foremost among the stabilizing factors, more enduring than customs, manners and traditions, are the legal systems that regulate our life in the world and our daily affairs with each other.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)