This book by Hall seeks to redress that problem he has collated and synthesized these extensive studies (to which the 27-page bibliography attests), and provides a Gestalt of the overall field regimes of England and the systems of each major region, as well as a more nuanced description of field practices within each region. While providing a great deal of new information regarding field regimes, it also created a mass of individual local studies from which drawing a broader picture of the medieval landscape would require extensive research and reading on the part of any individual scholar. This flood of new information was both a blessing and a bane. His work contributed greatly to what has been called the Quantitative Revolution, the flurry of field surveys and village excavations that began in the 1980s. He has written books and articles dealing with local field surveys, the nature and extent of open-field use in England, as well as Late Anglo-Saxon agriculture. Jay who has studied English medieval rural society or agricultural history is familiar with David Hall, currently the general editor at the Northamptonshire Record Society.
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