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Mark McKerracher

Archaeologist and Writer

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Farming unearthed… and transformed

Posted on April 3, 2018August 28, 2021 By Mark 4 Comments on Farming unearthed… and transformed
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I’m thrilled to say that, although I haven’t been able to write much of this blog over the past few months (or even years), I have managed to write a book which has lately been published by the excellent folk at Oxbow Books, in their Windgather Press imprint:

Farming Transformed front cover
My new book, featuring some lovely Hampshire farmland on the front cover

It’s called Farming Transformed in Anglo-Saxon England: Agriculture in the Long Eighth Century, and it covers material and themes that will be familiar to any regular readers of this blog: field systems, charred crop remains, the bones of livestock, and archaeological remains of farms, grain ovens and watermills.

With these things in mind, it tells the story of how Anglo-Saxon farming practices changed to become radically more productive from the 7th and (especially) 8th centuries onwards – that is, around the age of Bede – in the Thames valley, East Anglia, and beyond. How did this happen, where, when and why? Dig a little deeper into this fascinating story with Farming Transformed, now available for your perusal in paperback and e-book editions.

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4 thoughts on “Farming unearthed… and transformed”

  1. dearieme says:
    June 28, 2018 at 9:23 pm

    Would you care to point us to any reviews?

    1. farmyarder says:
      July 4, 2018 at 2:10 pm

      I would if I could but I can’t – yet – because I’m not aware of any having been published.
      All in good time, perhaps…

    2. farmyarder says:
      November 16, 2018 at 2:19 pm

      A review has just been published in Medieval Settlement Research No.33 (for 2018), in which Rosamond Faith writes (pp.102-103): “This well-written and extremely useful book… makes a mass of research data (and the techniques that can be used to interrogate these) available to the many readers interested in the history of early medieval farming; and it does so in an agreeable style with some quite tolerable jokes along the way”. She also notes, however, that “the look is somewhat drab”, and “some malign influence… has thought this book needed ‘sexing up’, and so we get a selection of the usual suspects as Causes and Contexts… it is a shame he allowed himself to be carried away with all this at the end!”

  2. dearieme says:
    November 29, 2018 at 9:56 pm

    “it is a shame he allowed himself to be carried away with all this at the end!”: youth, eh?

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