Yeavering, Northumberland

Reconstruction drawing by S. James of one of the phases of the use of Yeavering, Northumberland. In the foreground is part of the `great enclosure' and one side of its entrance, a fenced circle enclosing a building. If animals were brought here as tribute to the palace's owner, it is difficult to see how they could have been prevented from trampling the barrow mound (emphasised here by a totem-like post). The great hall, joined by an open enclosure to a small annexe building, would have been the focus of feasts and entertainment. Beyond, the reconstruction of the post-holes and slots as staging suggests a setting for decision-making by the leader and his people. One of the buildings in the background may have been used as a temple, as human burials and deposits of ox bones and skulls were found associated with it.

A site which shows how an aristocrat's life-style might have been maintained in the fifth and sixth centuries is in the far north at Yeavering, Northumberland, an inland promontory-though not hill-top-site. Timber buildings, some very large and using very solid posts and planks, were replaced at various times in a period of occupation which ended during the seventh century. The site's initial use was in the Bronze Age as a cemetery, and recognition of this religious use in the past may have been a reason for reoccupation, if association with such antiquities was considered to give some claim to ancestral links, and rights of inheritance to land and authority. The reuse probably started in the fifth century as no mass-produced pottery or other fourth-century artefacts were found. The very few objects that were recovered included an elaborate bronze-bound wooden staff in a grave aligned on the largest building; its purpose is unknown, but its importance must have been clear to those who deposited it in such a prominently-placed grave. 

Ceremonial and ritual at Yeavering are also suggested by a timber structure, the fan-like ground-plan of which has generally been accepted as the remains of wooden staging, for use during assemblies. These occasions were presumably enlivened by feasts and sacrifices, which the ox skulls overflowing from a pit alongside one building seem to attest. Before their slaughter, the animals were probably kept in a great enclosure on one side of the site. Sheep were also taken to Yeavering, and at least one building may have been used specifically for weaving since loom-weights were found in it. 

Yeavering suggests a site to which large numbers of animals came, presumably brought as tribute owed from the surrounding area to its chieftain. The feasts that were held after their slaughter would have confirmed this leader's status as one whose authority brought wealth which could be conspicuously, even recklessly, consumed; the high proportion of young calf bones suggest a profligate disregard for the need to maintain breeding herds. The meeting-place was where decisions were announced and agreed; the biggest of the buildings is interpreted as a hall where the feasts took place and oaths were sworn. These occasions were used to reinforce social ties that bound people together, as lord and dependent. Nor is Yeavering unique, since there is a site not far from it at Sprowston which seems to have most of the same features, except for the assembly-place, and at Thirlings, also in Northumberland, a complex of rectangular buildings, one some twelve metres long, has been investigated. Dating is not precise at any of these, but that the Yeavering staging was enlarged from its original size could be an indication that a larger group of people was becoming involved in the affairs conducted there as time passed, as though the authority of the ruler was becoming extended over a wider area. 

Nowhere that has been excavated in the south of England has shown evidence comparable to Yeavering's. In the south-west, and possibly further east in a few cases, hill-top sites may have been used by the aristocracy, but it is difficult to establish the precise functions of those places where some evidence of activity has been found. Glastonbury Tor, Somerset, was initially interpreted as a chieftain's residence, on the basis that animal bones suggested food inappropriate to the religious life, but that is now seen as too exclusive an interpretation.  Activities there included metal-working; crucibles were found, and copper-alloy residues and a fine little head. Dating depends upon Mediterranean and Gaulish pottery imported into the south-west in the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries, bowls and dishes being recognisable as having been made in the East Mediterranean and North Africa between c. 450 and 550. Most such sherds are from amphorae, which were probably reaching the south-west as wine containers, so their presence at Glastonbury Tor suggests drinking of an exotic rarity at the feasts of those who managed to obtain it. But the bones found there do not suggest such high-quality consumption; most of the beef and mutton came from elderly animals, not young stock which would have provided the most succulent joints, as at Yeavering.

The meat consumed on Glastonbury Tor was nearly all brought there already butchered and prepared, which is hardly surprising on such a small site where there would have been no room to do the slaughtering. At Yeavering, the great enclosure and the ox skulls suggest that animals were brought on the hoof; only one quern-stone was found, however, which could indicate that most of the grain arrived already ground into flour. A good standard of agriculture would have been necessary to supply Yeavering and the other residences used by a chief and his entourage as they progressed round their territory. Various pollen studies from the north of England show no decrease in meadowland and cereal plants in the fifth century, though some show regeneration of scrub and bog during the later sixth; but these analyses have to be made on sites which, being prone to wetness, have low agricultural potential and are inevitably therefore marginal and not necessarily representative of what was happening everywhere. It is even possible that poorer land was being farmed in preference to better, because the latter tended to be in less remote areas and was therefore more vulnerable in troubled times to slave raiders and other disrupting agents. Nevertheless, the evidence from the north seems to support that from West Stow in the east, of reasonable standards being kept up.

Agriculture

In the early Middle Ages the vast majority of the population of Europe was dedicated in some fashion or other to food production, which invariably involved agriculture. In early medieval Europe, as well as in later medieval and modern Europe, agriculture involved both crop farming and animal husbandry—a unique combination compared with agriculture in other parts of the world. In the economy of barbarian Europe, farming and animal husbandry existed in a symbiotic arrangement, in which specific crops were cultivated for animals, which in turn provided food and fertilizer. Despite the attention to agriculture, and the labor put into it, crop yields were generally small—the result of limited technology—and thus the vast majority of the population lived barely at the subsistence level.

In the agricultural villages of early medieval Europe the agricultural practices of the ancient Romans and their barbarian invaders came together to form the uniquely European agricultural tradition. One aspect of this, perhaps the result of the more pastoral nature of the barbarians who settled in much of the old Western Roman Empire, was animal husbandry. A number of different animals were bred, although not selectively as they were in Roman times, by early medieval peasants. The animals—including cows, oxen, horses, and pigs—provided a supply of both food and ready labor. Although little meat was eaten by the peasants, it was a welcome addition to an otherwise meager diet. But perhaps more important was the labor animals provided in the fields where various cereals were grown. Oxen and, eventually, horses were used to pull the plows that tilled the soil in early medieval villages. Peasants also grew oats specifically for the horses when the horse came into widespread use as a draught animal at the very end of the early medieval period. Cattle were often allowed to graze on the stubble found in the fields after the harvest, and their manure helped revitalize the fields. Also, hay and various grasses grew in the meadows of the villages, and the animals were allowed to wander in those meadows to eat the grasses.

Although animal husbandry was a significant practice of the peasants in barbarian Europe, it was far less important, and provided a much smaller amount of food, than farming. Some distinctive crops were produced in different parts of Europe because of climatic differences. Notably, grapes were grown in the warmer climates but were seldom found in the cooler climate of northern Europe. Despite this variety, the fundamental food crop was some type of cereal, which was often consumed in the form of bread and beer. Various types of wheat were grown in the village fields, as were barley, oats, rye, and spelt. The crop yields were quite poor, averaging a yield of between 2.5 to 1 to 3 to 1 to seeds planted. There were often times when this meager yield was even smaller, and thus famine was not an uncommon phenomenon; hunger was almost constant for the peasants. One means to make up for the poor production of the grains in the fields, however, was to plant small gardens near the home. These gardens often supplied foods that added valuable vitamins and minerals to the diet; the peasants grew root vegetables, peas, beans, and other legumes in their gardens.

Thus even though early medieval peasants spent much of their time cultivating grain, they also found time to grow a variety of vegetables to bring to the table.

Along with hunger, the greatest problem the peasant farmers of the early Middle Ages faced was soil depletion. In order to produce even the minimal yields they did, the peasants had to find some way to revitalize the fields they planted. One solution, of course, was to manure the fields, which they accomplished by allowing their livestock to graze in the fields and fertilize it while feeding. The early medieval peasant also collected manure from stables and spread it on the fields. But dependence on manure for fertilizer was an inadequate solution because of the smaller size of most farm animals during this period and because most animals were sold or slaughtered every fall (since the peasants did not have enough food to keep the animals through the winter). The most effective way to allow the soil to replenish itself was to let it lie fallow. Peasants in barbarian Europe were forced to leave part of their fields unplanted each year so that the soil could be revitalized and continue to return at least the small harvests that the peasants needed to survive.

Because of the need to let some fields lie fallow each year, the peasants practiced a regimen of crop rotation as well as rotation of fields to be planted. In the drier climates and even in the wetter north the standard practice until the ninth century was a two-field system of crop rotation. In this approach, half of the available land was plowed and half was left fallow, and in the following year the situation was reversed. Although this practice enabled the soil to replenish itself, it did leave much of the farmland uncultivated, which worsened the already difficult problem of food production. A series of Carolingian documents from around the time of Charlemagne (surveys of the great estates called polyptychs) reveal a new three-field rotation system emerging at that time. Even before then, and even in the drier regions, a second planting sometimes occurred; beginning in the ninth century, the new practice of dividing the fields into thirds became more widespread.

The most obvious advantage of this system was that it brought more land under cultivation each year, thus increasing the productivity of the fields; it also enabled the peasants to plant different crops. In this approach one third of the field was left fallow, another third was planted with winter wheat, and the other third was planted with a spring crop, generally oats or barley and sometimes legumes. The new system of planting did not completely replace the old two-field practice and was used mostly in northern Europe, where the soil was moister and the climate wetter. Although it was not introduced universally, the new three-field planting regimen was a great benefit to those who used it, and they enjoyed better yields of seed to crop than those who did not.

Peasants used a variety of tools in their daily farm labors, but for much of the period were hindered by the simplicity of design and the materials used to make them. The farmer’s tools were often made of wood, which was a less durable material than metal. Iron came into more general use only later in the early medieval period; when it did, it offered a great improvement in the quality of farming tools. The most important of all farm implements was perhaps the plow. The most common plow used by peasants in the post-Roman world of western Europe was the Roman or scratch plow. This was a simple, light tool that could be easily operated by the farmer with a small team of oxen, generally two. The scratch plow, as the name suggests, did little more than break the surface of the soil without turning it over. In areas like Italy where the soil is dry or sandy, this plow was often sufficient for the farmer’s needs, but in northern Europe where the soil is moist and heavy, this plow alone was inadequate. Often digging by hand was necessary to supplement the furrow made by the scratch plow.

Probably in the Carolingian age, a new more efficient plow appeared, better suited to till the soil in northern Europe. This plow, known as the carruca in contemporary documents, was a wheeled plow that was fitted with a moldboard and needed as many as eight oxen to work it. It was a more complex and expensive tool, but it also was furrowed and turned the soil over, thus aerating the soil and making it more fertile. Although a technological improvement, the carruca did not immediately replace the scratch plow even in the north; nevertheless, its gradual spread improved agricultural productivity.

The peasant farmers of early medieval Europe used a number of other tools as well. By the Carolingian period, water and wind mills were coming into more general use to grind the grain that was such an important part of the diet. Even before these mills appeared, hand-operated mills, which were much more labor intensive to operate, enjoyed widespread use by early medieval farmers. Finally, there were several handheld tools that were generally found on early medieval farms, including spades (a useful supplement to the plow for digging in the fields), axes, hoes, sickles, and scythes.

The tools and practices medieval farmers used, especially the plow, dictated the way they farmed and the shape of their fields. Most fields in early medieval villages were long narrow strips because of the difficulty of plowing them, especially when the carruca came into more widespread use. It was a difficult and time-consuming job to turn the team of oxen and plow around and so, to accommodate the new plow, the fields were long and narrow instead of short and wide. Also, medieval farmers fenced in their fields or sometimes built wide ditches to manage the livestock that were allowed to graze on the fields. The fences and ditches were intended both to keep livestock in and out so that they would not overgraze some fields or wander off to another village.

Agriculture in the early Middle Ages, therefore, was focused primarily on farming various grains. Peasants also practiced animal husbandry and planted small gardens where they grew beans and leafy vegetables. The level of farming was barely above subsistence and hunger was not unknown. The early medieval peasant, nonetheless, survived in the face of various difficulties through cooperation with other peasants and various techniques developed during that time. Use of animal fertilizer was not uncommon as was the use of animals, especially horses and oxen, as draft animals. Early medieval farmers also gradually developed a heavy plow for the rich soils of northern Europe, and they also practiced crop and field rotation.

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