ABSTRACT
Excavations at the deserted medieval village of Caldecote in Hertfordshire were conducted by Guy Beresford between 1973 and 1977. This chapter provides an academic and historiographical context for the main account of the excavation. It focuses on the medieval settlement studies, placing the events of 1970s into a wider academic and institutional matrix. The chapter examines why Caldecote was selected for excavation and how the work was organised on site. It then discusses the development of medieval rural studies since the 1970s when the campaign at Caldecote came to an end. When Caldecote first came under consideration in 1970 there had been only two major excavations of later medieval settlements published since Lost villages in 1954, at Hangleton and Upton. Since the 1970s the study of medieval settlement has also stretched to include a fuller range of medieval settlement types. In 1986 the Moated Sites Research Group merged with the Medieval Village Research Group to create Medieval Settlement Research Group.
