standardised procedure
For each regional study zone a standardised procedure was adopted. It consisted of :–
i) initial desk top research
ii) initial contact and discussion of the project to secure the co-operation of field workers and interested parties
iii) collection of data against a developed criteria of selection
Introduction 9 iv) assimilation, production and dissemination of the
first synthesis, followed by the production of the second draft
v) revisits after one year to incorporate any significant new finds likely to alter the pattern, followed by circulation of a final text.
Initial desk top research
The research was largely dependent on the willing co-operation of hard-pressed field archaeologists working on developer-funded projects. Their time is necessarily at a premium and therefore prior preparation was essential. This involved initial desktop study of fully published material already in the public domain. County journals (including published fieldwork gazetteers), air photography analyses, regional syntheses, palaeoenvironmental studies – these were used as the initial start point. Close attention was also paid to regional geology and topography. Due regard was paid to those sites published before the re-assessment of the chronology of prehistoric pottery assemblages by Barrett (1980b). As the research progressed the results of new initiatives also became available, including a spate of new regional research frameworks. In addition to public domain literature, it also proved fruitful to search out relevant unpublished postgraduate dissertations and theses.
Securing co-operation
Commercial archaeologists work for developers and are bound by a strict duty of commercial confidentiality. Researchers approaching commercial units must therefore reassure project managers and honour any embargoes on disclosure.
Mutual trust has to be established and developed in order to start a dialogue on the nature of regional discoveries and new observations being recorded on site, in environmental sampling, in watching briefs and post excavation analysis.
Collection of data and the criteria of selection
There are diverse repositories of archaeological data. The primary one for this research was the commercial archaeology units. In building a synthesis for a region, the advice of site and project directors was invaluable, together with overviews provided by artefact specialists and archivists.
Each unit also holds their own technical libraries;
originally county based but now expanded because of the competitive tendering system which spreads their work throughout the nation.
Access to the archive of grey literature provided the plotting of regional distributions including apparent voids in evidence. All client reports were checked including evaluation, walkovers, excavations, environmental sampling, strip and mapping and full scale excavation. Interim reports often flagged up the initial recognition of Bronze Age field systems, prompting a return visit at the completion of the next phase of the project. The co-operation of field staff allowed access to draft reports, site plans, sight of finds being processed, and latest radiocarbon dating results received from laboratories. Sites (work in progress), however, were only included in the gazetteers when they were no longer commercially sensitive. A number of commercial sites therefore do not appear in the published gazetteers but none of them alter the established distributions for field systems. Research within the units also extended to invitations to visit excavations in progress, to see at first hand the nature of the features being sampled.
In addition to the various commercial units other repositories of data were visited or contacted. These included Sites and Monument Record offices, local and county archaeological societies, local museums, community archaeology project leaders, county record offices to check the earliest documented boundaries on tithe maps, the National Trust Archaeology Office and researchers with regional expertise (e.g. J. D. Hill and Frances Healy for East Anglia).
For each designated study region a gazetteer was compiled. Each gazetteer lists sites that record aspects of an enclosed landscape or sites showing the intensification of land use during the second and early first millennium BC. The criteria for inclusion were as follows. Sites were included provided: –
a) features were securely dated by excavation or detailed survey. They represented:
b) components of ditched field systems, land enclosure and linear ditched or lynchetted land division; that had been:
c) adequately sampled; and
d) supported by collaborative circumstantial evidence.
Features dated by excavation or meticulous survey Coaxial field systems and aggregate field systems cover a long time-span. These design forms occur in two main phases during the prehistoric period; the Later Bronze Age and the Late Iron Age/Romano-British era. This research therefore
Land, Power and Prestige 10
followed the criteria that securely dated excavated land divisions would be central to the study. Land allotments judged to be prehistoric on the basis of air photography alone were excluded; though account was taken where air photography could trace the extension of land divisions from an excavated layout, as at Castle Hill in Devon and East of Corfe River, near Wareham.
Component parts of field and enclosure defined farms A field system is an assembly of parts connected in an organised manner such that each component is linked directly or indirectly to every other element. The main structural elements are the linear boundaries forming rectilinear land blocks; either all aligned coaxially or an accreted mix of alignments (aggregate in nature). Large linear borders and blocks of enclosures and compounds are counterparts to this gridded land arrangement. The size of area stripped or subject to evaluation trenching will help determine whether the discoveries have revealed a coaxial or aggregate field system. The gazetteers only designate coaxial land blocks where the excavations have confirmed an extensive ditched terrain, one that follows a common orientation.
Otherwise the term rectilinear field system is used.
Sample size
No field system has been fully excavated.
A sampling strategy is followed reliant on designated section cuts, bulk sampling and area strip. The exposure of a coaxial field layout, extensively sampled, incorporating an absolute dating programme together with a full palaeoenvironmental investigation provides the best evidence for regimented land management.
But it is possible to detect an organised terrain in small-scale excavation because, in commercial work, the frequency of interventions in the same locale can quickly accumulate sufficient evidence to confirm whether a well-organised countryside had existed. Even evaluation trenching might determine the overall orientation of field blocks.
Once that judgement has been made, even seemingly insignificant outlier fragments of ditch section may, with confidence, be included within the perimeters of the farmland.
Collaborative circumstantial evidence
Field systems are more than functional structures comprising linear constraints. They were arenas
for social reproduction and were manifestations of a new ideology and mode of living.
Clearly dated and investigated land blocks have produced a repertoire of evidence, which reflect a sedentary lifestyle – one of conspicuous consumption and production. A range of circumstantial evidence can alert a researcher seeking other zones of intensified and formally marked land tenure. Such circumstantial evidence is included, where appropriate, in the regional gazetteers to accompany evidence of formal land division. Gridded landscapes may be linked with urnfields, watering holes, metal finds, pottery and lithic concentrations, burnt mounds and settlement. Land divisions close to river frontages may be tied into various forms of managed access to waterfronts, including jetties, staithes, causeways, raised trackways and bridges.
Each gazetteer seeks to contribute towards a regional prehistory; so in Cornwall for example, account is taken of the local tradition of non-linear land boundaries. Throughout the study all evidence was explored and preconceptions avoided. However, by the close of the research certain discoveries came as less of a surprise because of the repeated preference for siting lowland land blocks on intensifiable ground in a strategic location. In that respect in one region alone along the North Sea coast it was suggested that the possible land blocks on Lothingland between Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft might be of Bronze Age origin.
Assimilation, production and distribution of draft syntheses
While considering the mass of regional data, visits were made to the counties concerned to gain a better appreciation of the various locales of concentrated field systems. All the zones in this study were visited from Penwith Peninsula in the west to Tendring Peninsula in the east, from Selsey Bill in the south to the Welland Valley and beyond in the north. Extensive visits of this nature were not solely confined to placing existing excavated sites in the landscape, for en route it was possible to observe major building sites prompting further enquiries as to the nature of the planning stipulations placed on those works. The commercial archaeology unit that had successfully gained the contract was ascertained and subsequently contacted. In some instances air photography archives were consulted, as for
Introduction 11 instance around Richborough in Kent, because
finds suggested the possibility of intensified settlement which might have been associated with an enclosed landscape. As a result of those visits and the assimilation of the data collected, a first draft synthesis plus site gazetteer and accompanying distribution map was circulated to those field archaeologists and interested parties able to comment on the accuracy and coverage reconsider the earlier interpretations made. For example the data for Kent was first explored in 1999 and subsequently reassessed in 2001 and 2004. The initial survey suggested a number of relevant sites (Yates 2001) but the pace of discovery grew, increasing the number of sites in the same distribution zones (Yates 2004). By contributing an analysis to contracting units, new material was returned in exchange including major contracts again confirming a void in Bronze Age land appropriation.
1.6.3 Research methodology: the issue of Sites