Parergon

This collection emerges from the earlier work of both editors on archaeological approaches to the early modern rural world. Here, Idoia Grau Sologestoa and Umberto Albarella argue for the need for further study of the long sixteenth century, in particular. They note how this period is often termed by archaeologists as the ‘early post-medieval’, a terminology that does not encourage consideration of its own transformations, or recognition of continuities. This is a period that they suggest has also not been a focus of attention in part for practical reasons, because many sites of sixteenth-century activities are now covered by urban development, are still occupied, or have become afforested. This collection seeks to begin this conversation by gathering together a range of archaeologists and diverse archaeological approaches to consider agricultural and land use developments in regional studies across Europe.

The collection comprises archaeological studies and its approaches, although a number are complemented by familiar sources of historical study, such as archives, legal texts, chronicles, and observer accounts for their determinations of contemporary land usage. This is directed to particularly valuable effect in the chapter ‘Landscape and Settlement Evolution during the Sixteenth Century: A Multidisciplinary Study of Two Mountain Areas (Eastern France)’ by Valentin Chevassu, Emilie Gauthier, Pierre Nouvel, Vincent Bichet, Hervé Richard, and Isabelle Jouffroy-Bapicot that documents the intensification of exploitation of the French region of the Jura Mountains, for iron and glass production through to firewood exported to nearby towns.

Other chapters utilise a wide range of contemporary archaeological techniques such as archaeometallurgy, pollen counts, LiDAR site assessment, zooarchaeology of animal bones and teeth analysis, and plant morphology. These are used in fascinating studies in the final section on technological changes, where Catarina Karlsson (‘Iron and Steel Implements: Increased Diversification during the Early Modern Era in Sweden’) employs experimental archaeology to determine metal farm tool wear and tear. Riina Rammo’s chapter ‘Changes in Rural Textile Craft during the Sixteenth–Seventeenth Centuries in the Eastern Baltic Region (Estonian Example)’, mostly considering extant clothing and textiles, also studies [End Page 263] an impression of weaving on the skin of a female body found in an Estonian peat bog, where the original plant fibres have long since disintegrated.

Collectively, the papers certainly demonstrate the dynamism of the sixteenth century. Transitions in land usage are well documented across the studies, with a marked increase in evacuation of villages leading to new manorial practices in southern Bohemia, in part a result of fewer peasant tenant fees available to landholders, as Ladislav Čapek argues in ‘Changes in Rural Milieu and Land Use on Estates in Southern Bohemia during the Sixteenth Century’. However, economic forces worked hand in hand with other factors, including cultural developments. Many aristocratic holdings were enclosed to embrace popular hunting practices. Slow change, by contrast, is the key narrative of Jana Mazáčková and Petr Žaža’s chapter ‘Impact of Subsistence on Medieval and Early Modern Land Use in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands’, looking at settlement patterns through identification of deserted villages in the Bohemia-Moravian highlands and analysis of their economic hinterlands.

The following section explores developments in agriculture and animal husbandry. Tamsyn Fraser employs animal bones of livestock to analyse patterns of livestock ‘improvement’ in urban and regional areas and in relation to changes wrought by enclosure, in ‘Livestock Improvement and Landscape Enclosure in Late and Post-Medieval Buckinghamshire, England’. Zooarchaeological evidence is also the source for the editors’ contribution, examining biometric data for principal domestic animals in regions of England and the Basque country in ‘Improvements in Animal Husbandry between the end of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era in England and the Basque Country: A Zooarchaeological Comparison)’. Both studies suggest that key...