field system

At their most simple, field systems are groupings of plots established in order to graze animals and cultivate crops in a controlled way. Each plot or field is usually surrounded by a fence, hedge, or wall, the latter as often as not derived from stones collected up from clearing stones from the plot in order to facilitate cultivation. The creation of a field system implies an investment in the land, and in addition to the fields themselves there may well be infrastructure facilities such as wells, threshing floors, animal houses, folds and pens, shelters and tool stores, barns, and maybe even dwellings for those working the land. Connecting the plots will be tracks and droves of various kinds.

The arrangement of a field system, its organization, and the nature of the components within it say a lot about its origins and how it worked. In general there are two kinds of arrangement, although either can occur as an ‘open field system’ where there are few if any walls, banks, or hedges dividing the plots or as a ‘closed field system’ where the boundary works between and around plots are substantial. Closed field systems are especially common where livestock form part of the regime.

Regular field systems have a common plan and fairly tight structure to them. Most were set out as a single operation, or at least planned in a way that could be expanded on a modular basis later if need be. The field plots are usually fairly uniform in size and shape, square and rectangular fields being common. One particular variant of the regular field system is the so-called co-axial field system where a framework comprising the long parallel boundaries forming the axis of the system are set out and then these strips, which may be several kilometres long, are infilled with cross-walls to create the field plots. Such systems began to be made during the Bronze Age in Europe, some of the best preserved being those identified by Andrew Fleming and John Collis on Dartmoor, England.

By contrast, irregular field systems are rarely planned: rather they develop piecemeal (irregular aggregate field systems) either by the periodic addition of new plots or the modification of what was originally a regular system. Irregular field systems tend to have curved or crooked boundaries between the plots, fields of uneven shape and size, and a high proportion of fields that can only be accessed from other fields rather than from a trackway or drove.