Editing Anglo-Saxons (section)

=== Settlements and working life ===
[[File:West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village buildings 2.png|thumb|278x278px|Reconstructed buildings from [[West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village]], [[Suffolk]]]]

Helena Hamerow suggests that the prevailing model of working life and settlement, particularly for the early period, was one of shifting settlement and building tribal kinship. The mid-Saxon period saw diversification, the development of enclosures, the beginning of the toft system, closer management of livestock, the gradual spread of the mould-board plough, 'informally regular plots' and a greater permanence, with further settlement consolidation thereafter foreshadowing post-Norman Conquest villages. The later periods saw a proliferation of service features including barns, mills and latrines, most markedly on high-status sites. Throughout the Anglo-Saxon period as Hamerow suggests, "local and extended kin groups remained...the essential unit of production". This is very noticeable in the early period. However, by the tenth and eleventh centuries, the rise of the manor and its significance in terms of both settlement and the management of land, which becomes very evident in the [[Domesday Book]] of 1086.<ref name="Hamerow, Helena 2012">Hamerow, Helena. Rural Settlements and Society in Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford University Press, 2012.</ref>

[[File:West Stow workshop interior.jpg|thumb|left|Reconstructed workshop at West Stow Anglo-Saxon village|242x242px]]
Typical Anglo-Saxon farms of middle period are often characterised as "peasant farms" but a [[churl|''ceorl'']], who was the lowest ranking freeman in early Anglo-Saxon society, was not a peasant but an arms-owning male with the support of a kindred, access to law and the ''[[wergild]]''; situated at the apex of an extended household working at least one [[hide (unit)|hide of land]].<ref>Higham, Nicholas J. ''An English Empire: Bede, the Britons, and the Early Anglo-Saxon Kings''. Vol 2 p.244</ref> The farmer had freedom and rights over lands, with provision of a rent or duty to an overlord who provided only slight lordly input.{{efn|There is much evidence for loosely managed and shifting cultivation and no evidence of "top down" structured landscape planning.}} Most of this land was common outfield arable land (of an outfield-infield system) that provided individuals with the means to build a basis of kinship and group cultural ties.<ref>Oosthuizen, Susan. ''Tradition and Transformation in Anglo-Saxon England: Archaeology, Common Rights and Landscape''. Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.</ref>

The collection of buildings discovered at [[Yeavering]] formed part of an Anglo-Saxon [[royal vill]] or king's tun. These 'tun' consisted of a series of buildings designed to provide short-term accommodation for the king and his household. It is thought that the king would have travelled throughout his land dispensing justice and authority and collecting rents from his various estates. Such visits would be periodic, and it is likely that he would visit each royal villa only once or twice per year. The Latin term ''villa regia'' which Bede uses of the site suggests an estate centre as the functional heart of a territory held in the king's demesne. The territory is the land whose surplus production is taken into the centre as food-render to support the king and his retinue on their periodic visits as part of a progress around the kingdom. This territorial model, known as a [[Anglo-Saxon multiple estate|multiple estate]] or [[shire]], has been developed in a range of studies. Colm O'Brien, in applying this to Yeavering, proposes a geographical definition of the wider shire of Yeavering and also a geographical definition of the principal estate whose structures Hope-Taylor excavated.<ref>O'Brien C (2002) The Early Medieval Shires of Yeavering, Bamburgh and Breamish. Archaeologia Aeliana 5th Series, 30, 53–73.</ref> One characteristic that the king's tun shared with some other groups of places is that it was a point of public assembly. People came together not only to give the king and his entourage board and lodging; but they attended upon the king in order to have disputes settled, cases appealed, lands granted, gifts given, appointments made, laws promulgated, policy debated, and ambassadors heard. People also assembled for other reasons, such as to hold fairs and to trade.<ref name="Sawyer, Peter 2013">Sawyer, Peter. The Wealth of Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford University Press, 2013.</ref>

[[File:Butser Ancient Farm Saxon Hall with re-enactor .jpg|thumb|Reconstructed Anglo-Saxon house at [[Butser Ancient Farm]], Hampshire]]

The first creations of towns are linked to a system of specialism at individual settlements, which is evidenced in studying place-names. Sutterton, "shoe-makers' tun" (in the area of the Danelaw such places are Sutterby) was so named because local circumstances allowed the growth of a craft recognised by the people of surrounding places. Similarly with Sapperton, the "soap-makers' tun". While Boultham, the "meadow with burdock plants", may well have developed a specialism in the production of burrs for wool-carding, since meadows with burdock merely growing in them must have been relatively numerous. From places named for their services or location within a single district, a category of which the most obvious perhaps are the Eastons and Westons, it is possible to move outwards to glimpse component settlements within larger economic units. Names betray some role within a system of seasonal pasture, Winderton in Warwickshire is the winter tun and various Somertons are self-explanatory. Hardwicks are dairy farms and Swinhopes the valleys where pigs were pastured.<ref>[[N. J. Higham|Higham, Nicholas J]]., and Martin J. Ryan, eds. Place-names, Language and the Anglo-Saxon Landscape. Vol. 10. Boydell Press, 2011.</ref>

Settlement patterns as well as village plans in England fall into two great categories: scattered farms and homesteads in upland and woodland Britain, nucleated villages across a swathe of central England.<ref>Pickles, Thomas. "The Landscape Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Nicholas J. Higham and Martin J. Ryan." The English Historical Review 127.528 (2012): 1184–1186.</ref> The chronology of nucleated villages is much debated and not yet clear. Yet there is strong evidence to support the view that nucleation occurred in the tenth century or perhaps the ninth, and was a development parallel to the growth of towns.<ref>Hamerow, Helena, David A. Hinton, and Sally Crawford, eds. ''The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology''. [[Oxford University Press|OUP Oxford]], 2011.</ref>