Standing on the shoulders of peasants: agency and risk in Anglo-Saxon farming

The socio-political history of England between the late seventh and early ninth centuries AD is principally characterised by two related themes. This period witnessed, on the one hand, the consolidation of the major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and land-owning élites; and, on the other hand, the arrival and spread of Roman Christianity – including a proliferation of monastic estates – as these kingdoms came within the ambit of western Christendom. Archaeology, meanwhile, provides strong evidence that, at the same time, agriculture was undergoing significant changes aimed at increasing productivity, especially in cereal farming. What remains unclear is the chief agency behind these agricultural innovations. According to some scholars, such developments presaged the process of ‘manorialization’, and ultimately the emergence of the feudal system. The coincidence of archaeological evidence for agricultural growth with high-status settlement sites could indeed imply that abbots and other landlords were the prime movers of these transformations in farming practices. Yet this period is not normally considered to be an age of strong, coercive lordship in England, in which élites could directly impose new agricultural regimes on peasant communities. This paper therefore explores an alternative model in which peasant strategies of risk aversion, coupled with growing political stability, sowed the seeds of transformation in Anglo-Saxon farming.