ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how any remaining question marks over their compatibility can be removed altogether by structuring them into a single, compound interpretation, one that adapts itself to historical and geographical changes in circumstance. Altogether, there are several different interpretations of how subdivided fields developed to be found in the literature. One can find areas where joint ploughing was widespread, yet where it was neither cause nor method as regards the laying out of subdivided fields. Gosely linked with shareholding as a cause of subdivided fields is the idea that the practice of partible inheritance had a formative influence. The mantle of communalism, which regular layouts and open field husbandries testify to, may have been donned later out of choice when the opportunity arose to re-organise or rationalise the system. Even so, this communalism was only a synthetic relationship, propelled along by several interests and tenure.
