Looking at the ridges and furrows of fields such as this, one can get a rare glimpse of what Medieval agricultural topography was like. The undulating patterns you see here were made hundreds of years ago above the settlement of Wood Stanway in Medieval England. There are two big reasons why the landscape still looks the way it did so long ago.
First, much of the arable land in England was changed over to pasture — some of this happened in the wake of the Black Death, because fewer people were needed to tend grazing animals than to plant crops. And that protected the land from changing because the main occupants were merely sheep, who aren’t known for their massive construction habits. Second, the land was marked this way because of the use of a heavy plough, a relatively new instrument in Europe’s northwest, stating about 1000. (See second slide).
The heavy plough was a big deal. In fact, a team of scholars used big data analysis a few years ago (2016) to argue that this technology drove up Europe’s agricultural output by 10%, thereby invigorating Europe’s economy. The southern soils around the Mediterranean Sea were light and sandy, and so a simpler plough sufficed. But after 1000 CE, the nutrient-rich clay soils in the northwest were able to be farmed much more intensively.
And why this was so was because of a combination of three things: a super strong ploughshare to cut the earth horizontally; a coulter (cutting an edge ahead of the ploughshare) to cut the soil vertically; and a mouldboard, which churned the sods of cut earth to make a deep furrow. These components kept weeding down, turned nutrients into the soil, and made these high-backed ridges that you see in this photo, which allowed for better soil drainage and took advantage of the wetter furrows and drier ridges to maximize yield with varied weather patterns.
And thus, one of the most important technological advancements occurred, making it possible for Europe to re-urbanize and engage in commercial activity in ways that it had not since the Western half of the Roman Empire fell.
First, much of the arable land in England was changed over to pasture — some of this happened in the wake of the Black Death, because fewer people were needed to tend grazing animals than to plant crops. And that protected the land from changing because the main occupants were merely sheep, who aren’t known for their massive construction habits. Second, the land was marked this way because of the use of a heavy plough, a relatively new instrument in Europe’s northwest, stating about 1000. (See second slide).
The heavy plough was a big deal. In fact, a team of scholars used big data analysis a few years ago (2016) to argue that this technology drove up Europe’s agricultural output by 10%, thereby invigorating Europe’s economy. The southern soils around the Mediterranean Sea were light and sandy, and so a simpler plough sufficed. But after 1000 CE, the nutrient-rich clay soils in the northwest were able to be farmed much more intensively.
And why this was so was because of a combination of three things: a super strong ploughshare to cut the earth horizontally; a coulter (cutting an edge ahead of the ploughshare) to cut the soil vertically; and a mouldboard, which churned the sods of cut earth to make a deep furrow. These components kept weeding down, turned nutrients into the soil, and made these high-backed ridges that you see in this photo, which allowed for better soil drainage and took advantage of the wetter furrows and drier ridges to maximize yield with varied weather patterns.
And thus, one of the most important technological advancements occurred, making it possible for Europe to re-urbanize and engage in commercial activity in ways that it had not since the Western half of the Roman Empire fell.
Sources: Journal of Development Economics, “The heavy plough and the agricultural revolution in Europe” Thomas Barnebeck Andersen et al, vol 118, Jan 2016, pp 133-149. Image Philip Galling Medieval Ridges and Furrow above Wood Stanway (CC BY-SA 2.0) Wiki Commons. Medievalists.net “The heavy plough and the Agricultural Revolution in Medieval Europe,” Thomas Barnebeck et al, _Discussion Papers on Business and Economics, no 6(2013).
