This well written volume explores continuities between Romano-British and early medieval landscapes using published excavations of pollen, animal bone, charred cereals and elements of Romano-British field systems. The collated data are presented in five external appendices accessible through the OUP website. Based on the proposition that ‘landscape character varies in both time and space’ (p 44), the book is structured around nine regions subdivided into pays. Their identification is based on geographic determinants — surface geology, relief, modern agricultural land classification — combined with cultural attributes: extent of Romanisation (urban hierarchies, the distribution of villas, temples, mosaics and pottery), degree of 5th-century cultural shift (eg new forms of settlement epitomised in Grübenhauser), changes in material culture, extent of woodland (from place names and Domesday Book), ‘scale of Anglo-Saxon immigrations’ and the ‘creation of villages and open fields in the later first millennium ad’ (p 46). The volume’s strength lies in its solid reprise of the wide-ranging evidence and established arguments for agricultural continuity across the Romano-British and early medieval centuries, the inadequacy of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ as a cultural descriptor and the utility of setting the period within the longue durée. It concludes that ‘Roman landscape character was different’ across central southern England (p 340), and that subsequent evolution of field systems occurred within ‘clearly distinct local and regional differences in agricultural practice across Britain in the first millennium ad’ (p 315). Readers should explore the variation of data between counties through the Appendices, since the evidence from some regions may be stronger than that from others. Table 3.4 (pp 76–7), for instance, summarises the numbers and proportions of major domesticated animals from 146 early Roman, late Roman and 5thto 8th-century rural sites (listed in Appendix III) across 15 counties from Cornwall to Norfolk; the text (p 78) refers to 319 sets of evidence. The number of reports from each county represented in the Table is variable: eg Appendix III cites around 28 sites in Northamptonshire, about 24 in Buckinghamshire, three in Cornwall and none in Devon. The conclusion that, on the fen islands, the proportion of late Roman ‘cattle increased very slightly from 38 per cent to 40 percent’ in the early medieval period (p 80) comes from a single site. Similarly, pie charts showing changes in the proportions of Roman (ad 43–400) and early medieval (ad 400–1066) woodland, arable and grassland pollen — usefully disaggregated by region and period in histograms (pp 66–7) — compare results from 15 Roman and 23 early medieval sites in the South West, for example, with only three Roman and four early medieval sites in East Anglia which is roughly equivalent in area. There are inaccuracies too. Sawtry, for example, is wrongly included with fen islands in Appendix III; elsewhere C Taylor is cited as proposing an ‘even more modest estimate of “no more than 10,000 Saxon settlers”’ in total (p 114) when what he actually wrote was significantly different: ‘Professor Charles Thomas has recently estimated that during the fifth century no more than 10,000 Saxon settlers came to this country’ [my emphases]. Despite these criticisms, however, the volume contributes solid support for the growing swell of research which suggests that most changes to the early medieval landscape represented evolution and innovation from a consistently Romano-British base.

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书评

这本写得很好的卷使用已发表的对花粉、动物骨骼、烧焦的谷物和罗马-英国田野系统元素的发掘，探索了罗马-英国和中世纪早期景观之间的连续性。整理后的数据显示在五个外部附录中，可通过 OUP 网站访问。基于“风景特征在时间和空间上都不同”（第 44 页）的命题，本书围绕九个细分为付费区域的区域构成。它们的识别基于地理决定因素——地表地质、地貌、现代农业用地分类——结合文化属性：罗马化程度（城市等级、别墅、寺庙、马赛克和陶器的分布）、5世纪文化转变的程度（例如在格鲁本豪瑟集中体现的新聚居形式），物质文化的变化，林地的范围（来自地名和世界末日审判书）、“盎格鲁-撒克逊移民的规模”和“公元第一个千年后期村庄和开阔地的创建”（第 46 页）。该卷的优势在于它对罗马-英国和中世纪早期农业连续性的广泛证据和既定论据的坚实恢复，“盎格鲁-撒克逊”作为文化描述的不足以及将时期设置在持久的。它得出的结论是，英格兰中南部的“罗马景观特征是不同的”（第 340 页），随后田地系统的演变发生在“第一个千年广告中英国各地农业实践的明显不同的地方和区域差异”中（第 315 页） . 读者应该通过附录探索县之间数据的差异，因为来自某些地区的证据可能比其他地区的证据更有力。例如，表 3.4（第 76-7 页）总结了从康沃尔到诺福克的 15 个县的 146 个早期罗马、晚期罗马和 5 至 8 世纪农村遗址（列于附录 III）的主要驯养动物的数量和比例；正文（第 78 页）涉及 319 组证据。表中代表的每个县的报告数量是可变的：例如，附录 III 引用了北安普敦郡的大约 28 个站点，白金汉郡的大约 24 个站点，康沃尔郡的三个站点，而德文郡没有一个站点。结论是，在芬岛上，晚期罗马“牛的比例从中世纪早期的 38% 略微增加到 40%”（第 80 页）来自单一地点。相似地，饼图显示了罗马（公元 43-400 年）和中世纪早期（公元 400-1066 年）林地、耕地和草地花粉的比例变化——在直方图中按地区和时期进行了有用的分类（第 66-7 页）——比较 15 的结果例如，西南部的罗马和 23 个早期中世纪遗址，东安格利亚只有 3 个罗马遗址和 4 个早期中世纪遗址，面积大致相当。也有不准确之处。例如，Sawtry 被错误地包含在附录 III 中的芬岛中；在其他地方，C Taylor 被引用提出了一个“更温和的估计，即“不超过 10,000 名撒克逊定居者”的总数（第 114 页），而他实际所写的内容却大不相同：“查尔斯·托马斯教授最近估计，在 5 世纪不超过 10,000 名撒克逊定居者来到这个国家'[我的重点]。