Snowdonia's early fieldscapes

Traces of stone and earthwork field boundaries, roundhouses and enclosures survive across extensive upland areas of northwest Wales. Collectively described as fieldscapes, they are among the best preserved and most complex examples of early land division in Europe. This thesis explores the human and environmental processes that led to their creation and survival between the first millennium BC and first millennium AD. It builds on relational approaches to land tenure, and considers the emergence of early land division as a long‐term phenomenon.
The research is based on mapping from detailed topographic models created using existing airborne laser scanning (lidar) datasets. Archaeological remains that are difficult or impossible to observe on the ground were identified through analysis of these digital models, significantly increasing the number and geographic distribution of recorded features. The large sample size, rich metadata and consistency of the dataset provided a unique opportunity to develop new approaches to help analyse and understand these early fieldscapes. Innovative geospatial and geostatistical methods were developed to assess their cohesion, preservation and character.
The results revealed new and distinctive patterns of enclosure bound up with detailed knowledge of and responses to the region’s varied landscape and local microtopography. People selected sunnier slopes to settle and farm, and they built low earthwork and stone banks to reduce the impact of prevailing winds. Across the mountainous terrain of Snowdonia, this created a network of curvilinear and irregular boundaries. On lower-lying slopes and flatter land, sinuosity was less pronounced, but boundary alignment appears to have responded to environmental conditions in a similar way. The importance of aspect and exposure suggests that further research should focus on exploring these characteristics and their relationship to the development of mixed farming practices.