The Wolds Research Project

Research Objectives: Current Models

In order to move from the very general interests outlined initially to the more detailed list of objectives provided below, it will be useful to summarise some current models of Wolds development and to critically, if briefly, assess them. A chronological discussion is adopted in what follows, as existing research directions are almost always defined in such terms, mostly with culture-historical labels attached to each period.

Our knowledge of early prehistory is very sketchy. Many fundamental questions concerning vegetation, landuse, woodland clearance are presently unanswered, although some knowledge will be gained with the study of flint scatters and their implications by John Poundset, especially in relation to Mesolithic material. It is already clear that a variety of activities were taking place in the landscape by the Neolithic period, some involving the development of cursus monuments around the modern village of Rudston. The distribution of different burials types around this focus implies spatial distinctions, and so perhaps some form of social differentiation, in the area. Jones has recently put forward a model, based on Lincolnshire evidence, to suggest an integral relationship between ring ditches, long barrows and free-standing, but associated, rectangular enclosures. This is something which other researchers may test on the Wolds, along with the collation of evidence for Neolithic chalk and flint mining.

By the later Bronze Age, it is clear that round barrows are proliferating, and that linear earthworks had been created, dividing up a previously-open landscape into large swathes. These earthworks are suggested by some to have a resonance with pre-existing features, whether purely functional track-ways or foci of a 'ceremonial landscape'. Either way, they represent a large-scale transformation of landholding, which may have been accompanied by the appearance of enclosed settlements: only further research by other parties can elucidate their spatial form, function, chronological relationships, resource implications and social context here, and set them beside evidence for more general agricultural developments.

From the 5^th century BC, the development of diagnostic, square-ditched barrow cemeteries is evident. The apparent lack of contemporary settlement has led to the suggestion that they may function as markers for transhumant groups, though the sheer scale of examples recently identified by aerial photography may mean that an absence of adjacent settlement is more apparent than real. More certainly, whatever their relationship with contemporary settlement and economy or with the preceding linear earthworks, these cemeteries must have had a significant role in creating Iron Age identities. Research work by other projects will continue to enhance our understanding of such social processes.

At some point during the Iron Age, we see evidence of ladder settlements on the Wolds, their arrival marking the start of our own project's main interest in that landscape. This development clearly took place in a context which was inherited from, and resonated with, elements from previous centuries, notably the linear earthworks, and perhaps pre-existing settlements. Thus some knowledge of earlier configurations will be needed to set the scene of our own investigations. Yet ladder settlements clearly indicate a sharply intensified demarcation of land, arguably to the level of the individual household, and the advent of more localised agricultural practices.

Thus, by the eve of Rome's move north of the Humber, a complete agrarian landscape had formed on the Wolds. Many authors, in traditional vein, have argued that the arrival of the legions ushered in new systems of state formation underpinned by market economics. However, other archaeologists would place much greater emphasis on continuity, the Iron Age framework of landholding being simply augmented by the insertion of 'villas' in the course of the 3^rd century AD. Indeed, a few argue that this system of landholding carried on into the early Anglian period, albeit with less intensive cultivation and an absence of villas, and even throughout the 1st millennium. According to the latter group, the only (!) differences seem to comprise shifting forms and patterns of settlement, plus a general return to more intensive exploitation in the period leading up to the Norman conquest.

For the early medieval period discussion has been dominated by questions of numbers of successive waves of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian settlers, and their impact on landholding patterns, generally inspired by historical or linguistic models. With the re-emergence of urban and high status secular and ecclesiastical centres, questions of town-hinterland relations and economic models for trading patterns also become central to the study of landscape continuity. However, by the time of the Domesday survey, large areas of waste land (or at least land which 'gave no return' according to that document) may have existed on the Wolds. Yet recovery was well under way by the 12^th century, with higher areas being used for pasture, and the lower slopes and valley floors for cultivation. As production declined in the 14^th century the area under regular cultivation contracted. The Black Death further impacted on the sustainability of some later secondary settlements, which reverted to sheepwalks and warrens.

Cultivation stabilised on the better land during the 16^th-17^th centuries, although the medieval open fields appear to have remained as the preferred agricultural regime. It was not until the early 18^th century that large-scale enclosure began to redefine the landscape. The Parliamentary enclosure of the early 19^th century saw the regular rectilinear fields extend onto the extensive common land. This comprehensive strategy of 'improvement' brought with it a new infrastructure of large tenant farmsteads away from village centres and new villages at the centres of the large estates. The extensive planting which went on within these estates restored some of the woodland, thus protecting earlier landscape features. However, the coverts and windbreaks rarely prevented archaeological features from being lost in the valley bottoms.

The agricultural depression brought temporary respite from the intensification of arable exploitation, but this soon picked up again during the First and Second World Wars. The increased mechanisation involved in this last period of change, and into the present, has created much of today's landscape. Certain effects of mechanisation have helped to protect archaeological deposits, for example by burying them in valley floors under material eroded from adjacent hillsides (though then making these sites inaccessible to identification and investigation). However, the net product of these changes in agricultural practice has been soil erosion and thus the degradation of the archaeological resource.

The models outlined above are useful up to a point in summarising a range of evidence and structuring further research questions. However some, notably the notion of general continuity of landholding through the first millennium AD, may have reached the point where they represent a paralysing consensus rather than useful, general synthesis. Indeed, the details of each can be questioned at nearly every turn, in part because of an unwillingness to recognise the selective nature of the sample of evidence currently available to us, and in part because of an inability to take on board the details of site context and formation processes when integrating finds evidence with structural and topographical details. For example:

the proposed role of Iron Age cemeteries in relation to transhumant movement is based on the seeming absence of contemporary settlement evidence in the region - always a very shaky foundation on which to base archaeological argument. In fact, this interpretation already sits uneasily beside the evidence produced by recent aerial photographs for the huge scale of square-ditched barrow burials and for their non-linear distribution in the landscape.
the assumed demise of such burial practice with the advent of ladder settlements may not really hold water. For example, does a late Iron Age sherd from the 'primary fill' of a ditch around such a settlement provide an accurate date for its original cutting, or could settled occupation develop at an earlier date, contemporary with some of the burials?
given that we know virtually nothing of landscape divisions beyond these ladder settlements, or beyond the 'villas' which are assumed to have been inserted later, there really is very little basis for deciding how, if at all, landholding patterns may have changed in the period AD100-400 (though some of the Wharram evidence suggests that the period c.AD200 may have been some sort of watershed in that landscape). Equally, can the finding of a few early Anglian sherds in the uppermost 'fill' of such a ditch suggest the latter continued in use into the 5^th/6^th centuries? Or is this just the chance survival of previously-overlying horizontal strata in the subsided surface of a formerly sealed landscape division?,
how can this notion of broad continuity AD 0-1000 be fitted with the evidence of shifting settlement foci seen at Cottam, and linked there with Saunders' model of a move from a tributary to feudal mode of production? Such sequences suggest, at least, that 'the devil's in the detail', that we must take up the challenge of relating change at one level of resolution with seeming continuity at a broader one.
for the historic period, the model of nucleation which has been put forward for much of Central England is still applied on the Wolds. Yet, given the latter's distinct regional landscape, how can the same pressures, acting at the same time, have exerted similar pressures on very different communities in the Midlands and East Yorkshire? Greater attention needs to be paid to the chronology of settlement change, its relationship with the laying out of open fields, and the role of other settlement types from isolated hamlets to urban centres.
at the other end of the scale, the process of desertion and recolonisation needs to be re-examined in much the same manner. It must be seen not only within the context of tenurial arrangements, but also within the exercise of power at a local level and the changing social hierarchy, and with respect to the environment. Thus, throughout the Holocene, the question arises of forest versus grassland. If there are periods when rough grassland was eliminated, the recording of insect species outside their 20^th century ranges could be a barometer of its return, identifying the point at which scattered populations could rebuild to viable numbers. With detailed chronology, we may be able to understand issues such as whether Iron Age vegetation containing 'southerly' insects survived on the Wolds, to be brought into Roman York in hay or horse guts (as suggested by the report on the Bedern Well).

In short, there are many ways in which conventional wisdom about how the Wolds 'worked' as a landscape through time can be questioned. Furthermore, even where it might be accepted at a general level, specific analysis will not only result in elaboration of the model, but will also generate significant transformations of our understanding of how social and economic relations were played out in detail, the level of resolution at which human activity really begins to make sense.

On the basis of previous work on the Wolds, the above models which they have generated, and the criticisms which can be made of the latter, a set of aims and objectives for particular areas of interest can be put forward.

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This site was last updated on March 2nd 2004 at 14:35 GMT.