(^4) an environmenTal hisTory of Wildlife in england
domestication of livestock, was brought by immigrants from Europe, and
perhaps emulated by the indigenous population. The principal crops – early
varieties of wheat and barley – were introductions from abroad, as were sheep,
goats and probably pigs and cattle (although the wild ancestors of both pigs
and cattle existed in England, as elsewhere in Europe, the evidence suggests that
they were not independently domesticated here).^14 The adoption of farming
soon led to the development of tracts of ground which were permanently
cleared of trees. The chalk downland around Winchester appears to have
been largely deforested by the middle of the fourth millennium BC;^15 in the
Peak District blanket bog, which had already begun to form following limited
woodland clearances during the Mesolithic, had spread to something like its
present extent by 3,000 BC.^16 In the middle Bronze Age, during the second
half of the third millennium, a shift away from a mainly pastoral economy
to one dominated by mixed farming was associated with an acceleration of
deforestation, a process which continued and intensified, albeit with localized
phases of regeneration, into the Iron Age.^17 Archaeological surveys suggest that
by the Roman period settlement was widespread on almost all soil types, and
there may have been as many as two million people living in England.^18 Some
ecologists believe that the landscape was already ‘something like the present
countryside, farmland with small woodlands rather than woodland with small
clearings’.^19 But we need to be a little cautious. Large areas of well-wooded
terrain still survived, as in Blackdown Forest or the Forest of Dean, and
settlement was, in most districts, significantly sparser than it was to become
in the Middle Ages.^20 The environment had, nevertheless, unquestion ably been
drastically modified by human intervention.
The population fell at the end of the Roman period, leading to some localized
woodland regeneration.^21 It began to recover again from the seventh century,
probably most rapidly after the ninth, and by the time of the Domesday survey
in 1086, there were around three million people living in England. With some
possible reverses in the early-mid-twelfth century, the population continued
to rise thereafter, peaking in the late thirteenth century at between five and
seven million.^22 Demographic expansion was then halted by the arrival of the
Black Death in 1348/49, which probably reduced the population by around
30–40 per cent. Thereafter, through the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
growth resumed. Perhaps more importantly, however, the farming economy
became more complex, and more regionally specialized in character.
farming regions
The medieval landscape, as this crystallized out in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, already displayed a significant measure of regional variation.
There was an obvious contrast between (on the one hand) upland areas,
where population levels were generally low, the extent of arable land limited,
and large areas of rough grazing survived, and (on the other hand) the more
elle
(Elle)
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