Week 6: late medieval crisis and historical NY

• Peat reclamation


  Reclamation of peat land, often initiated by landlords, bishops, monasteries, and counts
• Peat reclamation process


  1. Reclamations started from an axis, banks of a river, stream or a dike

  2. Often move to a second axis

  3. Pick highest part as the centre and build ditches around it, circular structure
• Peat reclamation


  • Unreclaimed in the middle => original surface decays
  • Arable field too low for cereal cultivation, settlement shift locations
• Example of land reclamation


  • Holme post, UK - small peat area with iron pole in the middle
• Assendelft


  • 10-20cm land height increase = sign of previous settlements
  • Excavation showed houses (turf walls + sod-walled) and a church
• Why did reclamation start in the 10th century? Population pressure, climate change. During this period, coastal dunes were formed.
• Influence of dutch peat reclamation started growing to Germany and England. Bremen's bishop specifically followed similar peat reclamation. Wiston castle in Wales, motte of Flemish developer = peat reclamation in its area.
• Effect of peat reclamations

  • Large-scale land subsidence
  • Shift of settlement to new locations
  • Eventually all land had subsided => cereal cropping became impossible which prompted 14th century transition to dairy production
  • Creation of open fields
• From 11th/12th century on higher Pleistocene grounds


  1. Small and narrow fields

  2. 13th century: creation of raised arable fields + need of fertilising which prompted plaggen soils
• Plaggen soils


  Manuring arable fields with mix of animal dung and heath sods + sand in Northwestern Europe
• Iron production in the Netherlands

  • 8th/9th century: iron production in central + eastern NL
  • It uses large quantities of charcoal
  • Caused deforestation => wind-driven sands forming inland dunes, erosion of arable fields + settlements overblown and deserted
• Crisis in the late medieval period (1250-1500)
• Political developments - 13th to 15th century

  • NL: integration into Burgundian state
  • Germany: emperors lost power, patchwork of small states
  • England: hundred years war
  • France: strong centralised state, from feudal to capitalist
  • England: lost positions in France
  • Burgundian state of Charles the Bold
• Burgundian state of Charles the Bold


  • Well organised central state but regional identities prevailed (Flemish, Holland and Brabant) + cultural and economic flowering period
• Economic developments: Hanseatic League (1350-1475)


  1. Towns gain independence of territorial rulers

  2. Merchants of a town form a group (merchant's guild)

  3. Towns protect their merchants, grant privileges to other town's merchants: hansa (considered a Golden Age)
• Trade included by Hanseatic League


  • German stonewares (most important produced centre = Siegburg)
  • Metals (iron, bronze)
  • Bricks (Gothic architecture)
  • Cereals, cloth, wine, and wood
• 3 causes of late medieval crisis (1300-1500)

  • Famine => crop failure
  • Disease => plague
  • War => devastations
• Effects of late medieval crisis

  • Population decline
  • Deserted medieval villages (DMV), halt to urban expansion, peasants' revolts, loss of trust in church
• Climate during crisis: Medieval Warm Period (800-1300) followed by Little Ice Age (1300-1850)
• Village industries


  • Rural world involved in extractions of raw materials, production of pottery or metal
  • Rural areas producers specialise at a village level, potter's village or iron producing settlements
• Settlements 13th to 16th century


  • Less well known than villages before 1250
  • Causes: Non-earthfast buildings leave little traces, Shift of settlements to locations of present-day villages, Archaeologists were less interested in this period
  • Many deserted medieval villages
• Wharram Percy


  • 2 manor houses that was owned by the Percy family until 15th century
  • Nowadays, not considered classic example of DMV, real decline only set in during 15th century due to enclosures
• Enclosures


  Open fields for common use were enclosed to private plots of land = more efficient use, conversion of arable fields to sheep pastures
• What did farmers do to the crisis?

  • Problems: shortage of labour, higher wages
  • Large landowners: selling part of the farm, transition from manorial systems to leaseholds
  • Solution: more extensive forms of agriculture, sheep rearing, specialisation in luxury goods (meat, dairy) labour saving techniques (lighter plough)
  • However, natural disasters added to crisis
• Loss of land due to floods in Holland, northern Germany and Denmark
• Four aspects of archaeology of NY

  • Contact period and early colonial developments
  • African burial ground
  • 19th century immigrants and the archaeology of slums
  • Decolonising Jersey Dutch histories
• Contact period


  Lenni Lenape people, New York and Delaware area
• Lenape land use


  1. Lenape bands assigned land from their common territory to particular clan for hunting, fishing and cultivation

  2. Private ownership of land was unknown, unlike Europeans

  3. Clans lived in fixed settlements using surrounding areas for hunting, planting and slash and burn agriculture (mobile landscape)
• Lenape crops


  • Maize (March)
  • Kidney beans
  • Squash (May) = Three Sisters were popular across the Americas
• Lenape agriculture


  • Crops were tended by the women and were not planted in fields which were fenced
  • Indian agriculture often invisible to Europeans, assumption = agriculture was men's work and done in fenced fields
• Lenape men


  Hunted game and caught fish and turtles
• Henry Hudson's Voyages


  Dutch West India company received charter on 3rd June 1621 granted trade monopoly over Dutch West Indies by Republic of the Seven United Netherlands + jurisdiction over participation in Atlantic slave trade
• WIC activities


  • Piet Heyn seizure of Spanish silver fleet in 1628
  • Consignment of sugar from Brazil and galleon from Honduras with cacao and indigo
  • Privateering (licensed pirates) was most profitable activity in late 1620s
• New Netherland


  • Area of modern-day New York State, New Jersey and parts of Delaware and Connecticut was settled by Dutch in 1624
  • New Amsterdam: began construction in 1626 but renamed to New York by British 70 years later
  • In houses: many European redware and pottery from Netherlands or Germany (dependent colony)
  • Dutch become primary Atlantic sea-power
  • Responsible for spread of Africans, ship Africans to Virginia and sell to English in 1619
  • Slaves become critical, help build Amsterdam
• Wampum


  • Traditional shell bead of Eastern Woodlands Native Americans
  • Includes white beads made from North Atlantic whelk shell and white/purple beads made from hard-shelled clam
  • Valued by indigenous people, thus used in trade with them for beavers
• African burial ground


  • Largely suppressed story, enslavement
  • Metres below = 1700s burial grounds that were built upon continuously
  • After archaeological intervention = maps and evidence showed burial grounds
  • Evidence (bone analysis) showed malnourishment and children were vulnerable to poor health and early death
  • Only 5% of New York African burial ground reached age of 55, whereas Protestant English Trinity church burial in 1679 had elderly adults
• Five Points district


  • Connected five roads, bustling area
  • By 1820s, expanding workforce in Manhattan had created severe housing shortage
  • City expand northward with landowners subdividing their houses into rental units
  • Foley Square courthouse erected over this part, prompted questions regarding relation to African burial ground, the bad reputation of the district, day-to-day life
  • 850,000 artefacts recovered in 1991 = rich story of working-class residents of the Five Points, notorious slum with overcrowded tenements
  • Many Irish and German immigrants
  • Lot 6, 472 Pearl Street = most intensively investigated of 14 historic lots
  • 100,000 items collected of Irish immigrants
  • Rise of individualism = more personal items
  • Most famous artefact: Father Matthew's Temperance Cup
• Decolonising Jersey Dutch histories

  • Working with Ramapough Lunaape Nation descendants of original Munsee Lenape inhabitants of northern New Jersey
  • Action-oriented and indigenous-led research focused on heritage landscapes
  • Historic maps used to retrace former tribal lands
  • Stone piles found = sacred ceremonial sites