Lecture

Agrarian Landscapes Formation in Medieval Europe

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In course

AR-154: Environmental history and theories I

Le cours vise a familiariser les etudiants avec l'histoire de l'environnement et des paysages, et avec la maniere dont les preoccupations environnementales amenent a repenser aujourd'hui le sens et les principes de l'architecture et des disciplines de pr ...

Description

This lecture explores the formation of agrarian landscapes in medieval Europe, focusing on the agricultural revolution, energy regimes, mechanical innovations, and the use of common lands. It delves into the evolution of farming techniques, energy productivity, and the impact of different crop cultivation systems. The presentation covers the transition from the Neolithic period to the Middle Ages, highlighting the development of diverse energy structures and the challenges of land privatization. Additionally, it discusses the tragedy of the commons, the openfield agrarian structures, and the impact of the enclosure movement on rural landscapes.

Instructor

Sébastien Jacques Marie Marot

Official source

Related concepts (18)

Neolithic Revolution

The Neolithic Revolution, or the (First) Agricultural Revolution, was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, making an increasingly large population possible. These settled communities permitted humans to observe and experiment with plants, learning how they grew and developed. This new knowledge led to the domestication of plants into crops.

Crop rotation

Crop rotation is the practice of growing a series of different types of crops in the same area across a sequence of growing seasons. This practice reduces the reliance of crops on one set of nutrients, pest and weed pressure, along with the probability of developing resistant pests and weeds. Growing the same crop in the same place for many years in a row, known as monocropping, gradually depletes the soil of certain nutrients and selects for both a highly competitive pest and weed community.

Agriculture

Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, fisheries and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in cities. While humans started gathering grains at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers only began planting them around 11,500 years ago. Sheep, goats, pigs and cattle were domesticated around 10,000 years ago.

Shifting cultivation

Shifting cultivation is an agricultural system in which plots of land are cultivated temporarily, then abandoned while post-disturbance fallow vegetation is allowed to freely grow while the cultivator moves on to another plot. The period of cultivation is usually terminated when the soil shows signs of exhaustion or, more commonly, when the field is overrun by weeds. The period of time during which the field is cultivated is usually shorter than the period over which the land is allowed to regenerate by lying fallow.

Cash crop

A cash crop, also called profit crop, is an agricultural crop which is grown to sell for profit. It is typically purchased by parties separate from a farm. The term is used to differentiate marketed crops from staple crop ("subsistence crop") in subsistence agriculture, which are those fed to the producer's own livestock or grown as food for the producer's family. In earlier times, cash crops were usually only a small (but vital) part of a farm's total yield, while today, especially in developed countries and among smallholders almost all crops are mainly grown for revenue.

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