@phdthesis{8679600,
  abstract     = {{This dissertation makes a contribution to the research on rural settlement landscapes in the County of Flanders and the south of Wales. During the high medieval period (tenth to mid-thirteenth centuries), the human impact on the landscape intensified and expanded to previously less reclaimed areas. For the County of Flanders, axes of exploitation and the ab nihilo plantation of new farms and row settlements as centres for the landscape reclamations, have been considered as important structuring aspects. Only few of such row settlements have been studied, but historical research indicates that inhabitants received legal, social, and economic privileges. Furthermore, people described as ‘Flemings’ are known to have migrated across Europe to plant new settlements and reclaim landscapes outside the County of Flanders. The most elaborately described Flemish settlement in contemporary chronicles was located in southern Wales, in the cantrefs of Rhos and Dungleddy (both part of modern-day Pembrokeshire). Popular belief claims that these Flemings paved the way for later English settlement, that would have resulted in a distinctively different character of the region described as ‘Little England beyond Wales’, something that is strongly nuanced by researchers to date. The only indications for this Flemish presence are place names referring to personal names of locatores, who are believed to have planted settlements with strikingly similar morphologies as the planted row settlements in the County of Flanders. Despite the suggestion of a Flemish origin for this settlement morphology in southern Wales, in-depth comparative research and incorporation of Flemish data is lacking. Moreover, due to the highly built-up character of modern-day Flanders, archaeological data for grouped rural settlements, many of which are still inhabited to date, is limited and does not allow further analysis.
The aim of this dissertation is to illustrate the potential of a cross-disciplinary landscape archaeological approach in offering new insights into the character and development of high medieval planted row settlements in the County of Flanders and the assumed translocation of this specific settlement system to southern Wales. It is argued that, as for other forms of material culture, landscapes are conditioned by socio-cultural context and are part of an individual’s habitus. Similarities and changes in settlement systems and morphologies may thus reflect how ideas about spatial planning were transferred or adjusted in order to cope with changing physical and social conditions of new regions. 
This dissertation’s objectives are twofold. First, a comparative framework on the row settlements in the County of Flanders is created. This considers the primal identification of the geographical and chronological distribution of row settlements in the county based on historical maps, the integration of the expanding archaeological dataset on rural settlements and fieldwork on the lost settlement of Nieuw-Roeselare in the north of the county. Second, former settlement morphologies in southern Wales are identified and mapped in order to allow comparative research on the metrical and morphological characteristics of row settlements in both regions. The aim is not to prove migration happened, but to analyse to what extent traditions in spatial planning were translocated and to understand these transformation processes in relation to the cultural and/or social context of the immigrants.
This research shows that regional and chronological variation in the occurrence of row settlements in the County of Flanders in relation to other types of rural settlement and the growing urban centres is to be found, depending on differences in socio-economic context, environmental aspects, (historic) ways of exploitation, political power-structures and land ownership. Yet, based on the mapping of row settlements and archaeological data, row settlement can be linked to the exploitation of previously less reclaimed lands. Furthermore, a wide array in metrical characteristics can be found both within and between the County of Flanders and southern Wales, therefore not allowing to identify one overall unified system. Significant morphological similarities, however, suggest that an overall idea of the settlement concept was widely used and linked to the practices and habits of locatores. However, this settlement morphology is related to the activities of locatores in reclaiming the landscape and not unique to the County of Flanders. It can therefore not purely be considered as ‘Flemish’. Moreover, clear cultural incentives for the use of this settlement morphology are absent. The translocation of this system to Wales can therefore mainly be considered as an expression of the locatores their social status as part of the Anglo-Norman elite in contrast to the Welsh as ‘the other’. Since settlement landscapes form part of their habitus, however, it is stated that its application can also be considered as an unwittingly expression of their cultural identity in the context of ab nihilo plantations.
Overall this research has made clear that the cross-disciplinary landscape archaeological approach to study rural settlement landscapes is highly effective and should be elaborated and promoted in further archaeological research in both Flanders and Wales.}},
  author       = {{Verbrugghe, Gerben}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{xxv, 375}},
  publisher    = {{Universiteit Gent. Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte}},
  school       = {{Ghent University}},
  title        = {{Little Flanders beyond Wales : a landscape archaeological study of row settlements in the British Isles and the County of Flanders}},
  year         = {{2020}},
}