C O N T E X T 1 4 5 : J U LY 2 0 1 6 23 Archaeologists are fully aware of the natural shocks that rock society, such as epidemic disease, famine caused by bad weather and even volcanic eruption. In the 21st century there is a growing list of potentially epidemic disease, such SARS, MERS, Zika, Ebola, and the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria such asTB and E Coli.The eruption in 2010 of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland led to the widespread cancellation of flights in northern Europe. Massive volcanic eruptions in the 530s have been linked to famines, the subsequent Justinian plague (also believed to be bubonic plague), and Anglo-Saxon migration to England. Duncan Wright of Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, spoke on the aftermath of this period, of the evolution of settlements in England from 650AD. He referred to ‘wandering settlements’ that seem to drift through the landscape, with structured permanent settlements developing later in the period. He suggested that settlement patterns reflected the nature of elite power. The authority of the earliest kings was not derived from agriculture, but from extensive overlordship. In the 5th and 6th centuries, their wealth came from the extraction of tribute: from conquest and war booty, rather than from the produce of their own lands. In the early medieval period this started to change. Power shifted to economic extraction, and kingdoms expanded.The church was a key to the process. Royal Courts remained itinerant well into the Late Saxon periods, whereas clerics were more permanent. Monasteries, from the outset, seem to have been permanently occupied. This invites us to consider 21st-century Britain, and how power and economic drive is impacting the development of settlements. Government in Great Britain is highly centralised, as are planning policies. Most development land is held by national or international institutional investors or mass-housebuilders who hold no allegiance to any particular town or city, beyond the profitability of their own land holdings. Local power is comparatively weak, and local authorities which can not demonstrate a five-year supply of housing land are regularly having attempts to resist planning applications for new development that stand outside the local plan overturned on appeal on national policy grounds. Planning and urban design experts such as Roger Evans have raised concerns that the present system does not ensure the systematic development of existing settlements. A long-term, whole-town approach is needed. But at the moment we are witnessing relatively random permissions for housing. Towns are expanding field by field, and not in a coherent way.Villages in car-dependent locations in open countryside are being expanded.They may look like villages, but their modern function is as residential suburbs. The former role of the village as a The location of test pits in Pirton, Hertfordshire, and Binham, Norfolk.The projects involve volunteers digging numerous holes across a village, one metre square and one metre deep. Examination of the soil creates a picture of where and when the village developed, and how intensively different parts were being used at particular times. Digging one of the investigation pits (Photo: Carenza Lewis)
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