ABSTRACT
An assessment of the relative importance of the different factors which go to make up the various types of open-field systems might go some way towards explaining the origins of such systems. Most of the definitions of the various types of open fields, admirable though they are, usually say nothing about the only aspect of open-field agriculture that the archaeologist can grasp, the physical remains of cultivation. Numerous scholars have attempted to describe, define and explain the general system of agriculture practised over much of Britain, and indeed on the continent, throughout most of the medieval period and later. Most of the definitions of the various types of open fields, admirable though they are, usually say nothing about the only aspect of open-field agriculture that the archaeologist can grasp, the physical remains of cultivation. Archaeologists are seeing only the final complications of a slowly evolving system of agriculture which has been subject to many changes.
