The Homestead Moat
Security or Status
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11615311 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Colin Platt (Platt College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 167 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 115-133 |
| Publication date | 2010-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Archaeological Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0066-5983 • E-ISSN: 2373-2288 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00665983.2010.11020794 |
| OpenAlex | W2330776083 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 64 |
The conventional wisdom on the origins and purpose of homestead moats is that they functioned as indicators of status. But that makes no distinction between manorial and homestead moats, and fails to take account of the combination of circumstances in early fourteenth-century England that resulted in a subsistence crisis of devastating proportions: the worst, it is now believed, in our recorded history. In 1300, many rural areas were already dangerously overcrowded. But it was the Agrarian Crisis of 1315–22, starting with back-to-back harvest failures and the Great European Famine of 1315–17, that caused the starving ‘undersettles’ to turn to crime and brought a tide of criminal violence to the localities. Harvests improved, but the violence continued until the Black Death (1348–49), fuelled by poverty and unprecedented taxes. And it is the argument of this paper that homestead moats, far from being the trophy assets of a would-be gentry class, were in reality precautions against the criminal activity to which all well-off householders were exposed
An Age of Transition?
English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250–1450
Structural Symbolism in Medieval Castle Architecture
Medieval greens and moats in the Central Province
Nucleated settlement
The origins of dispersed settlement; some results from fieldwork in Bedfordshire
Medieval Britain and Ireland in 1994
Revisionism in Castle Studies
Medieval Britain and Ireland in 1997
Medieval Britain and Ireland in 1993
Characterizing Rural Settlement and Landscape
Medieval Woodland, Agriculture and Industry in Rockingham Forest, Northamptonshire
Closing’ and the Later Middle Ages
Medieval Ireland
The Demise of the General Eyre in the Reign of Edward I
Martin Hansson. Aristocratic landscape
Castles in Context
Life, Marriage and Death in a Medieval Parish
Nature as historical protagonist
Villein rents in thirteenth-century England
The Selection and Appointment of Justices of the Peace in 1338
Medieval Farm Management and Technological Mentalities
Monastic mortality
Demographic decline in late medieval England
Before the Black Death
Colonization of the wasteland in County Durham, 1100-1400
A Divided Class? Peasants and Peasant Communities in Later Medieval England
Some New Evidence of Crises and Trends of Mortality in Late Medieval England
Understanding the Population History of England 1450-1750
Commercial Activity and Population Growth in Medieval England
The long march of history
Estimating arable output using Durham Priory tithe receipts, 1341-1450
Taxation, warfare, and the early fourteenth century 'crisis' in the north
The Volume of the English Currency, 1158-1470
Standards of living and capital formation in pre-plague England
The Productivity of Hired and Customary Labour
Peasant Welfare in England, 1290-1348
Benchmarking medieval economic development
Specialization of work in England, 1100-1300
The social economy of the medieval village in the early fourteenth century1
The transition to an advanced organic economy
The Agrarian Problem in the Early Fourteenth Century
The Ineffectiveness of Lordship in England, 1200 1400
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,27 |
| Citation span | 2015 - 2017 (3) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |