Christopher Gerrard with Mick Aston. The Shapwick Project, Somerset: a rural landscape explored.

Christopher Gerrard with Mick Aston. The Shapwick Project, Somerset: a rural landscape explored. CHRISTOPHER GERRARD with MICK ASTON Michael (Mick) Antony Aston (born July 1 1946) is a British archaeologist. He is a passionate educator and popularizer of archaeology, particularly through the Channel 4 television series Time Team. Aston is known to the viewing public for his colourful sweaters. . The Shapwick Project,Somerset: a rural landscape explored (Society for Medieval Archaeology The study of humankind through its material culture, specialising in the period of the European Middle Ages. At its broadest, the period stretches from the 5th to the 16th century CE and refers to post-Roman but pre modern remains. Monograph 25). xxviii+ 1048 pages, 1041 illustrations, 4 colour plates,CD-ROM. 2007. Society for Medieval Archaeology, printed &distributed by Maney, Leeds; 978-1905981-86-1 paperback 50 [poundssterling] & $90 (Society for Medieval Archaeology member price 45[pounds sterling] & $80). For many non-British medieval archaeologists, the excavations atthe village of Wharram Percy Wharram Percy is a deserted medieval village (DMV) site on the western edge of the chalk wolds in Yorkshire, England. The site is about one mile south of Wharram le Street and is clearly signposted from the B1248 Beverley to Malton road. grid reference SE858646. on the Yorkshire Wolds The Yorkshire Wolds are low hills in the East Riding of Yorkshire in North-Eastern England. The name also applies to the district in which the hills lie.The hills are formed from chalk, and make an arc from the Humber estuary west of Kingston upon Hull up to the North Sea (1950-1990) stilltend to dominate the picture of the British medieval countryside and thearchaeology conducted on rural settlements. However, a new generation oflong-running, multi-disciplinary and multi-period projects has emergedduring the last decades. With the successful publication of theinvestigations in the parish of Shapwick, a wetland-edge landscape incentral Somerset in southern England, yet another area can be added toan already impressive list of regional studies. The Shapwick project,encompassing ten years of fieldwork (1989-1999), had from the outset theambition to approach a complete parish with a multi-period perspective,albeit with an emphasis on the post-Roman era. Thus, one of theproject's main aims has been to study the development of settlementpatterns and field systems (p. 9). Special attention was given to theprocess of nucleation nu��cle��a��tionn.1. The beginning of chemical or physical changes at discrete points in a system, such as the formation of crystals in a liquid.2. The formation of cell nuclei. , one result being that the row settlement oftoday's village has its origins at least in the tenth century AD,if not earlier. Further questions the project hoped to tackle were theorigin of the common field systems and the process of enclosure as wellas the post-medieval emparkment. In order to study these historicaldevelopments the parish was turned into an 'outdoorlaboratory' (p. 8), where a wide range of techniques were applied,ranging from traditional fieldwalking to shovel pitting and gardensurveys. A further aim was indeed to employ and evaluate different waysof approaching the landscape. Much of this work was carried out with theassistance of students: Shapwick thus served as a base for teachingstudents the techniques and methods applied by the various disciplinesrepresented in the project. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The results of these comprehensive efforts are presented in amonograph with a conventional structure, consisting of six sections.Beginning with a presentation of aims and objectives as well as previousresearch carried out in the area (Part I), the next section presents andevaluates the different surveys--historical, archaeological andarchitectural-as well as the ecology of the parish (Part II). Thearchaeological excavations that took place outside the immediate villageas well as those carried out within Shapwick form the subject of PartIII, which is followed by numerous specialist reports on the variouscategories of artefacts recovered (Part IV). Part V contains theenvironmental data and the analyses of the animal and human boneassemblages. Conclusions and perspectives for further work close thebook (Part VI). Forty-five appendices ap��pen��di��ces?n.A plural of appendix. have been put on an accompanyingCD, its contents mainly consisting of additional specialist studies andtranslations and interpretations of the abundant documentary evidence A type of written proof that is offered at a trial to establish the existence or nonexistence of a fact that is in dispute.Letters, contracts, deeds, licenses, certificates, tickets, or other writings are documentary evidence. for the Shapwick parish. The volume is engagingly written and uses a reflexive (theory) reflexive - A relation R is reflexive if, for all x, x R x.Equivalence relations, pre-orders, partial orders and total orders are all reflexive. tonethroughout, discussing the pros and cons of the different methodologiesapplied and interpretations made. It is indeed possible, as ChristopherGerrard hopes (Preface: p. xviii), to browse through the book andapproach it as a kind of smorgasbord, picking out pieces for closerreading depending on personal research interests. This reviewer forinstance found the retrogressive ret��ro��gress?intr.v. ret��ro��gressed, ret��ro��gress��ing, ret��ro��gress��es1. To return to an earlier, inferior, or less complex condition.2. To go or move backward. analyses of 'habitative'fieldnames (p. 74 ff.), excavations within the Church Field (p. 405 ff.)and the project's treatment of post-medieval structures and findsespecially inspiring. To approach the monograph in this manner is alsothe handiest way to handle a volume of 1047 pages, densely printed indouble columns. Weighing 2.9kg, the Shapwick monograph does not qualifyas reader-friendly in terms of format and the volume could havebenefited from a somewhat firmer editorial hand. Considerations abouthow to publish are mentioned in the preface, bur alternative solutionssuch as moving additional chapters to the CD or digital publication forparts of the volume were not retained. How to best present vast amountsof material in an equally accessible and attractive manner withoutrunning the risk of fragmentation is a challenge that archaeologicalpublication in general still has to resolve. The authors, representing a variety of disciplines, have beenunited in their ambition to study the lives led by 'ordinary'people in the parish of Shapwick (p. 8). With the publication of thisvolume it is the physical landscape and the methods for investigatingthis landscape that have been given prime consideration: 13[km.sup.2] ofthe parish have been meticulously surveyed and reconstructed step bystep in an impressive and inspiring manner. The volume builds solidfoundations for further discussions on more social aspects of themedieval and post-medieval community, including the relations betweendifferent groups of inhabitants--'inequality' being one themeproposed by the authors--but also on the inhabitants' perceptionof, and interaction with, their landscape. Attempts in this directionalready exist within the present volume but more would have beenwelcome. However, a publication paying more attention to such themesappears to be underway (p. 1011). All in all, the Shapwickinvestigations with its broad spectra of data constitute a thorough casestudy that should prove not only an excellent basis for futurecomparisons within Britain but also in a wider geographical context, asseveral questions examined in the monograph have counterparts in otherEuropean landscapes. EMMA EMMAEngstrom Multigas Monitor for anesthesia. BENTZ Romisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Mainz, Germany (Email: bentz@rgzm.de)