This volume explores the relationships and interactions between medieval urban populations and their rural counterparts across north western Europe from the seventh to sixteenth centuries. This theme has become increasingly fragmented in recent decades, resulting in scholars being largely unaware of developments outside their own areas. The present volume brings together historians and archaeologists in order to highlight the varied ways in which town-country interactions can be considered, from perspectives that include economy, politics, natural environment, material culture, and settlement hierarchy. As a whole, the papers offer innovative interdisciplinary perspectives on the topic that create a new platform from which to understand more fully the complex, bilateral relationships in which both urban and rural spheres were able to influence and challenge each other. Contributions are wide-ranging, from the activities of elite, aristocratic groups in and around individual towns, to large-scale surveys covering wide areas. With coverage from the North Sea to the western Baltic, the book will be relevant to a range of disciplines including archaeology, history, and geography, and is aimed towards both advanced students and established scholars.

Innovations, transmissions and transformations had profound spatial, economic and social impacts on the environments, landscapes and habitats evident at micro- and macro-levels. This volume explores how these changes affected how land was worked, how it was organized, and the nature of buildings and rural complexes.

"One of the most important, imaginative, solidly documented, well written books of medieval history that I have ever read. . . . It offers a unique combination of synthetic power and analytic perception, of bold judgment and Cartesian doubt, of hard economic facts and subtle psychological considerations."--

The Routledge Handbook of Medieval Rural Life brings together the latest research on peasantry in medieval Europe. The aim is to place peasants – as small-scale agricultural producers – firmly at the centre of this volume, as people with agency, immense skill and resilience to shape their environments, cultures and societies. This volume examines the changes and evolutions within village societies across the medieval period, over a broad chronology and across a wide geography. Rural structures, families and hierarchies are examined alongside tool use and trade, as well as the impact of external factors such as famine and the Black Death. The contributions offer insights into multidisciplinary research, incorporating archaeological as well as landscape studies alongside traditional historical documentary approaches across widely differing local and regional contexts across medieval Europe. This book will be an essential reference for scholars and students of medieval history, as well those interested in rural, cultural and social history.

The reissue of Joseph and Frances Gies’s classic bestseller on life in medieval villages. This new reissue of Life in a Medieval Village, by respected historians Joseph and Frances Gies, paints a lively, convincing portrait of rural people at work and at play in the Middle Ages. Focusing on the village of Elton, in the English East Midlands, the Gieses detail the agricultural advances that made communal living possible, explain what domestic life was like for serf and lord alike, and describe the central role of the church in maintaining social harmony. Though the main focus is on Elton, c. 1300, the Gieses supply enlightening historical context on the origin, development, and decline of the European village, itself an invention of the Middle Ages. Meticulously researched, Life in a Medieval Village is a remarkable account that illustrates the captivating world of the Middle Ages and demonstrates what it was like to live during a fascinating—and often misunderstood—era.

The Middle Ages saw the rise of feudalism in the European countryside, when most people spent their lives working the land to feed the growing population across the continent. Read about how peasants lived and worked in the medieval village.

Larson examines the changing relations between lords and peasants in post-Black Death Durham. This was a time period of upheaval and change, part of the transition from ‘medieval’ to ‘modern.’ Many historians have argued about the nature of this change and its causes, often putting forth a single all-encompassing model; Larson presses for the importance of individual choice and action, resulting in a flexible, human framework that provides a more appropriate explanation for the many paths followed in this period. The theoretical side is balanced by an ‘on the ground’ examination of rural life in Durham-- an attempt to capture the raw emotions and decisions of the period. No one has really examined this; most studies are speculative, relying on theory or statistics, rather than tracing the history of real people, both in the immediate aftermath of the plague, and in the longer term. Durham is fortunate in that records survive in abundance for this period; most other studies of rural society end at 1300 or 1348. As such, this book fills a major gap in medieval English history while at the same time grappling with major theories of change for this transformative period.