Helena Hamerow et al - Feeding Medieval England: A Long ‘Agricultural Revolution’, 700–1300 (November 2025)

Helena Hamerow, Mark McKerracher, and the Feedsax Team

As in the rest of Europe, the population of medieval England grew steeply, especially between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. This volume investigates how medieval farmers managed to produce sufficiently large harvests to sustain this growth—which in turn fuelled a major expansion of towns and markets—and the impact of this ‘cerealisation’ on the landscape. It presents new evidence recovered from hundreds of archaeological excavations for the development of the medieval farming regimes that shaped the English landscape in ways still visible today. Medieval farming is a contentious topic, not least because of the different approaches taken by historians, archaeologists, and geographers. No consensus has been reached about the cultivation regimes that underpinned the remarkable increase in cereal production seen in this period. A large-scale analysis of the excavated remains of medieval crops, weeds, livestock, and pollen has generated new evidence using a range of science-based methods. The results reveal the conditions in which medieval crops were grown and the way in which land use changed between the late Roman period and the Black Death. The authors relate the results to archaeological and written evidence for farms and farming, bringing an ecological perspective to the debate about the so-called medieval agricultural revolution. The ‘cerealisation’ of England emerges as a regionally variegated process lasting several centuries, whose overall impact can nevertheless be described as ‘revolutionary’.

Find out more at Oxford Academic.