Landscape and History explores a complex relationship over the past five centuries. The book is international and interdisciplinary in scope, drawing on material from social, economic and cultural history as well as from geography, archaeology, cultural geography, planning and landscape history. In recent years, as the author points out, there has been increasing interest in, and concern for, many aspects of landscape within British, European and wider contexts. This has included the study of the history, development and changes in our perception of landscape, as well as research into the links between past landscapes and political ideologies, economic and social structures, cartography, art and literature. There is also considerable concern at present with the need to evaluate and classify historic landscapes, and to develop policies for their conservation and management in relation to their scenic, heritage and recreational value. This is manifest not only in the designation of particularly valued areas with enhanced protection from planning developments, such as national parks and world heritage sites, but in the countryside more generally. Further, Ian D. Whyte argues, changes in European Union policies relating to agriculture, with a greater concern for the protection and sustainable management of rural landscapes, are likely to be of major importance in relation to the themes of continuity and change in the landscapes of Britain and Europe.

Long before the Norman Conquest of 1066, England saw periods of profound change that transformed the landscape and the identities of those who occupied it. The Bronze and Iron Ages saw the introduction of now-familiar animals and plants, such as sheep, horses, wheat, and oats, as well as new forms of production and exchange and the first laying out of substantial fields and trackways, which continued into the earliest Romano-British landscapes. The Anglo-Saxon period saw the creation of new villages based around church and manor, with ridge and furrow cultivation strips still preserved today. The basis for this volume is The English Landscapes and Identities project, which synthesised all the major available sources of information on English archaeology to examine this crucial period of landscape history from the middle Bronze Age (c. 1500 BC) to the Domesday survey (c. 1086 AD). It looks at the nature of archaeological work undertaken across England to assess its strengths and weaknesses when writing long-term histories. Among many other topics it examines the interaction of ecology and human action in shaping the landscape; issues of movement across the landscape in various periods; changing forms of food over time; an understanding of spatial scale; and questions of enclosing and naming the landscape, culminating in a discussion of the links between landscape and identity. The result is the first comprehensive account of the English landscape over a crucial 2500-year period. It also offers a celebration of many centuries of archaeological work, especially the intensive large-scale investigations that have taken place since the 1960s and transformed our understanding of England's past.

An atlas of English archaeology covering the period from the middle Bronze Age (c. 1500 BC) to Domesday Book (AD 1086), encompassing the Bronze and Iron Ages, the Roman period, and the early medieval (Anglo-Saxon) age.

'The formation of the landscape archaeological record is primarily a product of the post-medieval period' (Tom Williamson). This book reflects some of the most recent work in landscape studies of the period since 1500. It builds upon ideas and techniques pioneered by Hoskins in fields such as Anglo-Saxon topography and vernacular architecture, and also demonstrates how scholars are developing the subject conceptually, to examine landscapes as cultural artefacts, perceived differently by different groups within society.

A Historical Geography of Europe provides an analytical and explanatory account of European historical geography from classical times to the modern period, including the vast changes to landscape, settlements, population, and in political and cultural structures and character that have taken place since 1500. The text takes account of the volume of relevant research and literature that has been published over the past two or three decades, in order to achieve a coverage and synthesis of this very broad range of evidence and opinion, and has tried to engage with many of the main themes and debates to give a clear indication of changing ideas and interpretations of the subject.

First published in 1982, The English Medieval Landscape was written to recreate and analyse the development of the major elements of the medieval landscape. Illustrated with maps and photographs, the book explores the nature of the English landscape between 1066 and 1485, from farms and chases to castles, monastic settlements, villages, roads, and more. The English Medieval Landscape will appeal to those with an interest in medieval history and British social history.

The discipline of landscape history has recently taken a new turn: away from the analysis of past land use and environments towards an understanding of landscape as a social construct. This book is a significant step along this exciting new road. Focusing on Norfolk in the post-medieval centuries, Nicola Whyte recaptures the essential character of ordinary people's experience of landscape. She shows how perceptions were deeply rooted in the comprehension of material antiquities, the annual round of work, public events and religious ritual, and the complex web of rights and jurisdictions mapped out in the fields. People valued and gave meaning to the landscape for a wide range of reasons, many of them unconnected with the economic potential of the land. Landscape features outside the confines of the church and the graveyard - pilgrimage routes, crosses, wells and springs - played an important part in the ideological shift of the Reformation. Parish boundaries, and in particular the annual ritual of 'beating the bounds' at Rogationtide, reveal much about the shifting pattern of local allegiances and competition over resources. Places of execution and the graves of suicides were 'mneumonic spectacles' defining both geographical and behavioural limits. The local history of enclosure and rights to commons is the story of nascent capitalism in rural England, a clash of values between modern productivity and ancient tradition that involved the reinterpretation and renegotiation of the past. Informed by the latest archaeological theory, this book shows how landscape development was a dynamic, experiential process, in which world-views changed as well as woods, hedges and fields.