Medieval settlements and landscapes in the Whittlewood area

A multi-disciplinary investigation of medieval settlement and landscape in a carefully selected area of England, building on a succesful pilot project. The existence of both villages and hamlets gives an opportunity to explain the divergence between these settlement forms in an environmental and social context.

Project

Academic field

Archaeology

History

Affiliation

University of Exeter

University of Leicester

Queen's University Belfast

National Trust

English Heritage

Buckinghamshire County Council

Northamptonshire County Council

Project link

Medieval settlements and landscapes in the Whittlewood area

Funders

Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)

Medieval Settlement Research Group

Society for Medieval Archaeology

English Heritage

Royal Archaeological Institute

Society of Antiquaries

London

Aurelius Trust

arts-humanities.net

Principal investigator

Professor Christopher Dyer

Principal project staff

Dr Richard Jones; Dr Mark Page; Professor Christopher Dyer

Start date

Thursday, August 1, 2002

Completion date

Friday, July 1, 2005

Source material

The main historical sources were documents from the National Archives, the British Library and many local repositories, e.g. Northamptonshire Record Office, New College Oxford. The source of the archaeological data came from our own field work - field walking, test pitting, aerial photography, planning of earthworks, resistivity surveys etc.

Data formats

Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF)

Apple QuickTime Movie (MOV)

Comma Separated Data (CSV)

Esri Shapefile

JPEG File Interchange Format (JPG)

Publications

Jones, R. and Page M., Medieval Villages in an English Landscape: Beginnings and Ends (Macclesfield, 2006).
Page, M. and Jones, R. 'Stable and Unstable Village Plans: case-studies from Whittlewood', in M. Gardiner and S. Rippon (eds.) Medieval Landscapes in Britain (Macclesfield, 2006).
Jones, R., Dyer, C., and Page, M. 'The Dynamics of Medieval Villagescapes', Internet Archaeology, 19 (2006).
Page, M., 'Destroyed by the Temples: the deserted medieval village of Stowe', Records of Buckinghamshire, 45 (2005), 189-204.
Jones, R., 'Signatures in the soil: the use of ceramic manure scatters in the identification of medieval arable farming regimes', Archaeological Journal, 161 (2005), 159-88.
Page, M. and Jones, R., 'The Whittlewood project: excavation of a medieval manor at Wicken, 2004', MSRG Annual Report, 19 (2004), 24-7.
Jones, R. and Page, M., 'Characterizing rural settlement and landscape: Whittlewood Forest in the middle ages', Medieval Archaeology, 47 (2003), 53-83.
Page, M., 'The extent of Whittlewood Forest and the impact of disafforestation in the later middle ages', Northamptonshire Past and Present, 56 (2003), 22-34.
Page, M. and Jones, R., 'The Whittlewood project interim report 2002-3', MSRG Annual Report, 18 (2003), 27-36.
Jones, R. and Page, M., 'Medieval settlements and landscapes in the Whittlewood area: interim report 2003-4', MSRG Annual Report, 18 (2003), 37-45.
Dyer, C., 'Whittlewood: revealing a medieval landscape', Current Archaeology, 182 (2002), 59-63.
Jones, R., 'The Luffield Priory grange at Monksbarn, Whittlebury, Northants', Northamptonshire Archaeology, 30 (2002), 126-39.
Jones, R. and Page, M., 'Medieval settlements and landscapes in the Whittlewood area: interim report 2001-2', MSRG Annual Report, 16 (2001), 15-25.
Page, M. and Jones, R., 'The Whittlewood project interim report 2000-1', MSRG Annual Report, 15 (2000), 10-18.