Dr Sue Oosthuizen
@drsueoosthuizen.bsky.social
Professor (Em.) of Medieval Archaeology, University of Cambridge.
Early #medievalEngland c400-1200CE; #commonrights & governance; #fen #watermanagement; #landscape⚱️& 🗃️. #medievalsky
Research & publications @ https://profsusanoosthuizen.wordpress.com
Research & publications @ https://profsusanoosthuizen.wordpress.com
Such empathy with these huddled beasts on a 10th/11thC whalebone chesspiece, perhaps a rook or a bishop, snuggling up against cold and damp autumn days…
www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o...
www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o...
October 19, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Such empathy with these huddled beasts on a 10th/11thC whalebone chesspiece, perhaps a rook or a bishop, snuggling up against cold and damp autumn days…
www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o...
www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o...
'Thor's stone' rising above Thurstaton [=Thorstein+tūn] Heath (Wirral), the latter used for common grazing since time began. The stone’s encircled by a broken ring of peaty ponds, the result of quarrying - but I can't help thinking of other monuments where the juxtaposition was deliberate
October 10, 2025 at 2:02 AM
'Thor's stone' rising above Thurstaton [=Thorstein+tūn] Heath (Wirral), the latter used for common grazing since time began. The stone’s encircled by a broken ring of peaty ponds, the result of quarrying - but I can't help thinking of other monuments where the juxtaposition was deliberate
WHAT?!
I just can't .....
I just can't .....
September 3, 2025 at 3:34 PM
WHAT?!
I just can't .....
I just can't .....
AND, if that weren't enough, you've probably noticed the low banks and shallow outer ditch of the irregular 4-sided enclosure - around 120m x 100m in extent - on the lower slope that cuts across (& is therefore later than) those earlier fields.
It's probably a #medieval sheep-fold.
It's probably a #medieval sheep-fold.
April 13, 2025 at 4:30 PM
AND, if that weren't enough, you've probably noticed the low banks and shallow outer ditch of the irregular 4-sided enclosure - around 120m x 100m in extent - on the lower slope that cuts across (& is therefore later than) those earlier fields.
It's probably a #medieval sheep-fold.
It's probably a #medieval sheep-fold.
In this view, looking towards the SW, the footpath running along the LH (eastern) side of the fields so clearly bounds them that it must be contemporary with them.
📷 This lovely photo from @megalithic.bsky.social's website at www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?...
📷 This lovely photo from @megalithic.bsky.social's website at www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?...
April 13, 2025 at 4:21 PM
In this view, looking towards the SW, the footpath running along the LH (eastern) side of the fields so clearly bounds them that it must be contemporary with them.
📷 This lovely photo from @megalithic.bsky.social's website at www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?...
📷 This lovely photo from @megalithic.bsky.social's website at www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?...
Here, 5-7 acre fields are defined by 1.5m high banks and terraces, each about 10m wide. The fields, roughly rectangular, lie on a SW/NE diagonal across the slope, covering around 44 acres of natural downland.
Source: www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Resu...
Source: www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Resu...
April 13, 2025 at 4:16 PM
Here, 5-7 acre fields are defined by 1.5m high banks and terraces, each about 10m wide. The fields, roughly rectangular, lie on a SW/NE diagonal across the slope, covering around 44 acres of natural downland.
Source: www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Resu...
Source: www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Resu...
Raking shadows thrown by low sun emphasise the terraced banks of an extensive IronAge/#RomanoBritish field system on the steep N-facing slopes of Burderop Down, Wilts. ... AND the ditches of a #medieval sheepfold that cut across them.
📷 historicengland.org.uk/education/sc...
📷 historicengland.org.uk/education/sc...
April 13, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Raking shadows thrown by low sun emphasise the terraced banks of an extensive IronAge/#RomanoBritish field system on the steep N-facing slopes of Burderop Down, Wilts. ... AND the ditches of a #medieval sheepfold that cut across them.
📷 historicengland.org.uk/education/sc...
📷 historicengland.org.uk/education/sc...
Bunny savouring the pleasure of finding a #medieval #lane whose alignment, continuing in the modern road ahead, records its demotion from a through route that once connected a minor #Romano-British villa (farmhouse) with the wider world..
Comberton, Cambs.
📷mine, 2016
#landscape #history 🥳
Comberton, Cambs.
📷mine, 2016
#landscape #history 🥳
April 10, 2025 at 6:23 PM
Bunny savouring the pleasure of finding a #medieval #lane whose alignment, continuing in the modern road ahead, records its demotion from a through route that once connected a minor #Romano-British villa (farmhouse) with the wider world..
Comberton, Cambs.
📷mine, 2016
#landscape #history 🥳
Comberton, Cambs.
📷mine, 2016
#landscape #history 🥳
How do ancient #traditions of #collective governance help societies weather unpredictable change?
🎺Just published! 🎺
'Panarchy & #commons across the longue durée’
Open access via heathland.place/panarchy-and....
📷 Minchinhampton Common (c) Geoff March, Stroud Times, 12.5.2023
🎺Just published! 🎺
'Panarchy & #commons across the longue durée’
Open access via heathland.place/panarchy-and....
📷 Minchinhampton Common (c) Geoff March, Stroud Times, 12.5.2023
February 9, 2025 at 3:10 PM
How do ancient #traditions of #collective governance help societies weather unpredictable change?
🎺Just published! 🎺
'Panarchy & #commons across the longue durée’
Open access via heathland.place/panarchy-and....
📷 Minchinhampton Common (c) Geoff March, Stroud Times, 12.5.2023
🎺Just published! 🎺
'Panarchy & #commons across the longue durée’
Open access via heathland.place/panarchy-and....
📷 Minchinhampton Common (c) Geoff March, Stroud Times, 12.5.2023
16. So every time I see water flowing across the fields, down the lanes, I think of the springs, the gault, the hummocky ground & the generations of farmers whose livelihoods have since prehistory depended in large part on stock grazing extensive common pastures - now often converted to fields. END
January 1, 2025 at 5:12 PM
16. So every time I see water flowing across the fields, down the lanes, I think of the springs, the gault, the hummocky ground & the generations of farmers whose livelihoods have since prehistory depended in large part on stock grazing extensive common pastures - now often converted to fields. END
15. Before modern drainage, the low-lying, barely sloping land overlying the gault in this part of Cambs. had always been pasture, grazed under rights of common. By the Middle Ages it was called the 'old feld' (Offal) - 'feld' as in the S African 'veld': grassland studded with trees.
January 1, 2025 at 5:08 PM
15. Before modern drainage, the low-lying, barely sloping land overlying the gault in this part of Cambs. had always been pasture, grazed under rights of common. By the Middle Ages it was called the 'old feld' (Offal) - 'feld' as in the S African 'veld': grassland studded with trees.
14. Sometimes that hummocky ground has been manicured into village greens as at Barrington. Taylor reminds us that villages were often settled on the worst land so as to maximise the area of land available for arable. You can also see that in the geology map in this thread.
January 1, 2025 at 5:03 PM
14. Sometimes that hummocky ground has been manicured into village greens as at Barrington. Taylor reminds us that villages were often settled on the worst land so as to maximise the area of land available for arable. You can also see that in the geology map in this thread.
13. Such traces were created by tenants so desperate for land/food around 1300 that they put all the extra difficult effort into ploughing the gault, risking losing their crops to floods. When the population fell c1350 these fields were abandoned & once more reverted to pasture.
January 1, 2025 at 5:02 PM
13. Such traces were created by tenants so desperate for land/food around 1300 that they put all the extra difficult effort into ploughing the gault, risking losing their crops to floods. When the population fell c1350 these fields were abandoned & once more reverted to pasture.
12. Waterlogged, hummocky, this was land that was very difficult to plough before the modern era. Some carries faint traces of medieval ridge & furrow, like that outlined by buttercups here in spring - the same field across which my boots were squelching.
January 1, 2025 at 5:00 PM
12. Waterlogged, hummocky, this was land that was very difficult to plough before the modern era. Some carries faint traces of medieval ridge & furrow, like that outlined by buttercups here in spring - the same field across which my boots were squelching.
11. some of these flooded areas are the remains of pingos in the modern, now more often ploughed, landscape?
January 1, 2025 at 4:59 PM
11. some of these flooded areas are the remains of pingos in the modern, now more often ploughed, landscape?
10. Briefly: in the last Ice Age as the water was forced out between chalk & gault, the springs froze creating larger and smaller lenses of ice. Over time a thin layer of soil began to cover them. When the ice eventually melted an embarked pond was left behind. Maybe
January 1, 2025 at 4:57 PM
10. Briefly: in the last Ice Age as the water was forced out between chalk & gault, the springs froze creating larger and smaller lenses of ice. Over time a thin layer of soil began to cover them. When the ice eventually melted an embarked pond was left behind. Maybe
9. the surface was (before ploughing) interrupted by ponds, small and large, each surrounded by a low bank. They are called pingos. Like this one still surviving in Norfolk, they are remnants in the landscape of the ice age. (Photo content.freshwaterhabitats.org.uk/2018/09/Stow...)
January 1, 2025 at 4:55 PM
9. the surface was (before ploughing) interrupted by ponds, small and large, each surrounded by a low bank. They are called pingos. Like this one still surviving in Norfolk, they are remnants in the landscape of the ice age. (Photo content.freshwaterhabitats.org.uk/2018/09/Stow...)
8. because it has to cross what Christopher Taylor calls ‘hummocky ground’: ground that traps the water as it’s uneven. Partly because, as in this field, it’s full of anthills, an indication that it hasn’t been ploughed for centuries, and partly because
January 1, 2025 at 4:53 PM
8. because it has to cross what Christopher Taylor calls ‘hummocky ground’: ground that traps the water as it’s uneven. Partly because, as in this field, it’s full of anthills, an indication that it hasn’t been ploughed for centuries, and partly because
7. ..the gault clay is already saturated - it can’t take any more water. So where the water flowing through the chalk meets the gault it’s forced out in springs (image astonrowant.wordpress.com/droving-in-t...)
and then flows across the surface of the land. But that’s not straightforward.
and then flows across the surface of the land. But that’s not straightforward.
January 1, 2025 at 4:52 PM
7. ..the gault clay is already saturated - it can’t take any more water. So where the water flowing through the chalk meets the gault it’s forced out in springs (image astonrowant.wordpress.com/droving-in-t...)
and then flows across the surface of the land. But that’s not straightforward.
and then flows across the surface of the land. But that’s not straightforward.
6. .. towards the river a mile or 2 to the N. But geology plays as important a part. Rain falls evenly across the landscape. Some runs down the hill from Boulder clay to chalk to gault clay, but much permeates downwards through the clay & then the chalk. But
January 1, 2025 at 4:50 PM
6. .. towards the river a mile or 2 to the N. But geology plays as important a part. Rain falls evenly across the landscape. Some runs down the hill from Boulder clay to chalk to gault clay, but much permeates downwards through the clay & then the chalk. But
5. Here in S Cambs. it depends in a combination of the lie of the land and its geology. The hill slope at the base (S) of the map, where the contour lines are close together, gives way to a much flatter landscape to the N. That’s enough to begin to slow the flow of water ..
January 1, 2025 at 4:49 PM
5. Here in S Cambs. it depends in a combination of the lie of the land and its geology. The hill slope at the base (S) of the map, where the contour lines are close together, gives way to a much flatter landscape to the N. That’s enough to begin to slow the flow of water ..
4. This was land that could never have been ploughed before under-field drainage was introduced. Dig down more than 6” here and the hole fills with water. How does that work?
January 1, 2025 at 4:48 PM
4. This was land that could never have been ploughed before under-field drainage was introduced. Dig down more than 6” here and the hole fills with water. How does that work?
3. .. and everything is sodden underfoot.
January 1, 2025 at 4:45 PM
3. .. and everything is sodden underfoot.
2. Seasonal springs are already bubbling with water ...
January 1, 2025 at 4:44 PM
2. Seasonal springs are already bubbling with water ...
THREAD. So much rain has the fields floating in water. Not quite the conditions yet of 2021 - the images in this thread - but, in the east of England, still a practical lesson explaining so much about land use before under-field drainage began in the 17thC.
January 1, 2025 at 4:39 PM
THREAD. So much rain has the fields floating in water. Not quite the conditions yet of 2021 - the images in this thread - but, in the east of England, still a practical lesson explaining so much about land use before under-field drainage began in the 17thC.