The logics of enclosure: deep‐time trajectories in the spread of land tenure boundaries in late prehistoric northern Europe

Abstract

Invasive schemes involving the erection of land tenure boundaries are currently spreading quickly across vast areas throughout the globe, turning former unfenced forests and grasslands into closed‐off parcels. These processes pose intriguing questions about the deep history of colonizing assemblages consisting of particular tenure practices, temporalities, and technologies, as well as their potential long‐term repercussions. This article expands the temporal horizon applied to human‐nonhuman configurations, endeavouring to focus beyond the ethnographic present or the event on trajectories as a particular spatial and temporal logic of fencing and the virtuality that ensues. It explores the earliest large‐scale spread of land tenure boundaries across northern Europe, a process which occurred between the seventeenth and fifth centuries BCE, several millennia after Neolithization. Significant ebbs and flows in this process demonstrate how fencing exerts pressure on the future, a conspiring of forces and potentialities regarding what may or may not turn into long‐term paths towards ever‐increasing or enduring boundaries. By applying a 2,000‐year timespan to the study of material ontologies, this article explores new interfaces between archaeology and new materialism which reveal the presence of formative yet dynamic processes and quasi‐paths.

Dividing the Land: Time and Land Division in the English North Midlands and Yorkshire

“…The earliest land divisions in Yorkshire and the north-east Midlands begin with localized aggregated enclosures, more characteristic of western and northern Britain. Our region's large-scale lowland field systems have a distinct identity within the landscapes of enclosure of the first millennium cal bc in north-western Europe (Løvschal, 2020), though this pattern may also reflect the focus of development-led work on lower-lying landscapes.…”

“…While several overviews of land division in Britain and northern Europe have been produced recently (e.g. Chadwick, 2010; Ten Harkel et al, 2017; Løvschal, 2020), this study represents the first attempt at producing a long-term, geographically wide-ranging, robust chronology for the timing and tempo of land divisions that transcend traditional period boundaries for a region of the British Isles. It identified evidence for the origin of land divisions in Yorkshire and the north-east Midlands in the mid-second millennium cal bc , followed by an escalation after c. 700 cal bc and, again, a peak around cal ad 1000 .…”

“…While site-specific Bayesian models can radically alter our understanding of a sequence of change, we need to use different analytical lenses to think about the structure of our narratives and how we write about change (Griffiths, 2017). The land divisions of the second and first millennia cal BC are a north-western European phenomenon (Løvschal, 2020), and the ability to integrate British and European Iron Age evidence has been a subject of significant debate (Hamilton et al, 2015). One cause of tension is that explanations of the links between Iron Age European communities are still led by material culture studies (e.g.…”

Anthropogenic heathlands: disturbance ecologies and the social organisation of past super-resilient landscapes

“…The Anthropogenic Heathlands project (ANTHEA) is led by associate professor Mette Løvschal at Aarhus University and runs for a period of five years (2020–2025). Its chronological span covers 2800 BC–AD 1000, with particular focus on the historical trajectories of heathland establishments and survival of large-scale reorganisations, including land allotment and de-/reforestation (Løvschal 2020). Seven case-study areas spanning from south-western Norway to south-western Britain will form shared geographic focal points for the project.…”

‘Not as single spies’: a review of European Social Anthropology 2020

“…The slow half-life deterioration of nuclear matter exemplifies one of the essences of the Anthropocene: its invisible trajectories, unfolding over time. Løvschal (2020) co-opts Braudel's longue durée perspective to the long-standing anthropological and philosophical questions of how humans construct boundaries, colonise space and enclose existence. How the landscape wears the badges of human attention and intentionality is a critical nexus of relations.…”