Becoming Through Milling: Challenging Linear Economic Narratives in Medieval England

Abstract

The relationship between handmilling, undertaken in domestic contexts, and mechanized mills in medieval Kent is used to challenge linear approaches to economic progress in the Middle Ages. Inspired by posthuman perspectives which emphasize messiness, non-linearity and multiplicity, medieval economic development is re-imagined as a patchwork of intensive material processes. In so doing, an approach is developed which works towards dissolving problematic binaries between gendered labour, domestic and economic spheres and the Middle Ages and modernity.

Examining Temporality and Difference: an Intensive Approach to Understanding Medieval Rural Settlement

“…These markets emerged from a process of commercial growth through the twelfth-thirteenth centuries. It did not take the form of a teleological progression towards modern capitalism (Cohen, 2005, 19-20;Howell, 2010, 300-301;Jervis, 2018Jervis, , 2022Wickham, 2021, 15), but surfaced as a patchwork of happenings or intensities. By mapping the relations required for brewing, we can see how the capacities, or affordances, for the community to brew were distributed across wide networks and the landscape (see also Handsmann, 2018).…”

“…As such, it provides a means to understand experiences as contextually contingent and diverse, offering a valuable means to critique generalising models of economic and social development (e.g. Jervis, 2018Jervis, , 2022. Secondly, by de-centring human agency in historical processes, they create a space in which the role of objects, materials and other non-human elements become implicated in change.…”