Medieval Rural Settlement and Infrastructure Archaeology Across Europe

This volume provides a unique new Europe-wide perspective on the impact of infrastructure‑led archaeology on our knowledge of medieval rural settlement.

Across the 5th–16th centuries, most of Europe’s population lived and worked in the countryside, based in villages, hamlets, farms and small towns. Some of these medieval settlements persist today, but many others were abandoned and, over time, erased from memory.

Good infrastructure is essential for modern society to function well, but its construction can be immensely destructive of archaeological sites including medieval settlements whose remains are rarely sufficiently monumental to warrant costly redesign to preserve them intact. However, since the adoption across Europe of the ‘polluter pays’ principle obliging developers to fund the identification, investigation and recording for posterity of at-risk archaeological remains, our understanding of the extent and range of medieval settlement remains in the landscape has expanded substantially.

The volume explores the paradox that ‘While large‑scale infrastructure projects represent a major challenge for archaeology, they also offer opportunities to expand scientific knowledge’ (Rácz & Sárosi, this volume). Fifteen new reviews by experts in medieval archaeology and heritage management in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Scotland and Spain consider the impact of discoveries from infrastructure-led archaeology on knowledge of rural settlement in the past, and on archaeological practice today. The volume culminates in a synthesising overview distilling transnational themes and identifying ten key actions shown by experience across these fifteen different states to maximise the knowledge dividend of infrastructure archaeology.

This volume is essential reading for anyone interested in the historic countryside, heritage management or impactful archaeological investigation.

Carenza Lewis is Professor of Public Engagement with Research at the University of Lincoln, having formerly been archaeological investigator with the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, research fellow at Birmingham University, and director of Access Cambridge Archaeology at Cambridge University. A MSRG member since 1986, she has researched and published widely on medieval rural settlement, since 2005 directing community excavations in >80 currently occupied medieval rural settlements in England and from 2019–23 leading a major project introducing this approach in more than a dozen rural settlements in the Netherlands, Czech Republic and Poland. A former president of the Society for Medieval Archaeology and of MSRG, she currently chairs the European Archaeological Association Advisory Committee for the Public Benefits of Archaeology and is the UK national representative for Ruralia.

Neil Christie is Professor of Medieval Archaeology at the University of Leicester, UK, where he has been based since 1992. His specialisms relate chiefly to late Roman and early medieval archaeology, notably in Italy, but he has also worked on and led excavation and survey projects in Spain, Turkey and England, including a major project centred on the early to late medieval historic townscape of Wallingford in Oxfordshire. Key research themes cover urbanism, defence and transitions in the landscape. He has a long association (as Secretary and Reviews Editor) with the UK’s Medieval Settlement Research Group and the Society for Medieval Archaeology.

Gareth Davies is Technical Director at SLR Consulting and an Honorary Research Fellow in Medieval Archaeology at the University of Nottingham. A member of the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists and a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, Gareth’s former roles have included Director of Archaeology at the York Archaeological Trust, Chairman of the Sedgeford Research Project in Norfolk and member of the MSRG Committee. An experienced field archaeologist, Gareth’s research interests focus on the development of social complexity in the settlement landscapes of early medieval Britian and north-west Europe, and how excavation and survey methods can help inform these debates. He has published widely on settlement investigations in the Midlands and East of England and was co-chair of the MSRG infrastructure archaeology seminar series.

Aidan O’Sullivan is Professor of Archaeology and Head of UCD School of Archaeology, at University College Dublin. His research interests focus on early medieval Ireland in NW Europe; wetlands archaeology and environments globally, and experimental archaeology, and he is co-director of the UCD Centre for Experimental Archaeology and Material Culture (CEAMC). He was co-PI of the INSTAR-funded Early Medieval Archaeology Project (EMAP), 2007–2015, and is currently co-PI of the Taighde Eireann/Research Ireland COALESCE-funded Early Medieval People and Things (EMAP) project, exploring the materiality of life in early medieval Ireland, AD 400–1100.