Introduction

Peoples of early medieval England drank beer on an ‘oceanic’ scale (Finberg 1972, p 422). Whilst high levels of beer consumption were the norm across much of early medieval Europe, the English in particular were known for their heavy drinking (Knowles 1963, p 465; Thomas 2003, p 301). However, as noted by Carruthers and Hunter Dowse (2019, p 107), corresponding archaeobotanical evidence for beer production and consumption in the period has been conspicuously lacking. Also lacking has been thorough archaeobotanical characterisation of the agricultural regimes used to produce grain for beer in the era: a vital part of beer-making and of the wider story of agriculture in early medieval England.

This paper’s specific focus is on understanding how crops supplying a securely-identified malting complex dated to the 8th to 9th centuries (c.) ad were cultivated, in the context of questions about theorised transformation in agricultural practice during the 7th to 9th c. ad (so-called mid Anglo-Saxon period) in England (cf. McKerracher 2018). The study assemblage derives from the unique, large-scale malting complex at Sedgeford, East Anglia, UK. Malting, the first stage of beer production, is conventionally evidenced archaeobotanically by abundant and widespread germinated cereal grains (e.g. Lodwick 2017). An earlier paper (Caroe 2022a) gave an overview of the assemblage, detailing evidence of grain germination and other factors confirming that Sedgeford’s is indeed a malting complex, as well as emphasising the wider context in terms of beer production and consumption.

The so-called medieval agricultural ‘revolution’ in England (e.g. White 1940; Williamson 2018) has recently been investigated by an extensive multi-proxy interrogation of bioarchaeological remains by the University of Oxford’s FeedSax project (Hamerow et al. 2019, 2025; McKerracher and Hamerow 2022). Rather than identifying a single period of ‘revolutionary’ change, changes in agricultural practice in England between ca. ad 700–1300 were piece-meal and regionally varied, over several centuries, ‘punctuated by periods of innovation and rapid change’ (Hamerow 2022, p 24), including the late 7th to 9th c. ad (Hamerow 2007; Rippon 2010; McKerracher 2018; Williamson 2018).

FeedSax’s research has identified three features commonly associated with changes in early medieval agriculture – extensification, use of the mouldboard plough and crop rotation – dubbing this the ‘mouldboard plough package’ (Hamerow 2022). Extensification is defined as increase in crop productivity achieved through expanding the land area under cultivation, associated with a decline in inputs of manure and labour (weeding and tillage) per areal unit of land (Bogaard et al. 2016; Hamerow 2022). Research using FWE (see below) implies a shift from relatively high (intensive) to relatively low input (extensive) arable farming across England from the 8th until the 14th c. ad (Hamerow et al. 2025, pp 102–103), continuing a trend already apparent in the Romano–British era (e.g. Lodwick 2022).

The mouldboard plough permitted expansion of cultivated land onto heavy clay soils. A distinctive mouldboard plough coulter dated to the 7th c. ad has been recovered at the royal monastic site of Lyminge, Kent (Thomas et al. 2016). This evidences early use at isolated locations, but is (so far) by some margin the earliest known in England, and zooarchaeological evidence for pathologies in cattle foot-bones indicating heavy traction suggest that mouldboard plough use was itself rare until the mid-9th c. ad (Holmes 2022). Further, there is minimal pre-10th c. ad documentary evidence for the mouldboard plough (Holmes 2022). However, the lack of earlier documentary records may be due to the dearth of textual evidence from the era (Holmes 2022).

‘Classic’ crop rotation involved two or three fields, with one remaining fallow while the other(s) were cultivated. In three-field rotation, one field is sown with an autumn-sown crop (generally wheat, sometimes rye or barley), and one with a spring-sown (often barley or oats, occasionally wheat). In subsequent years, use rotated (Hall 2014, p 36). FeedSax research does not evidence the country-wide 7th to 9th c. ad shift to this field system that some have advocated (e.g. White 1940).

We here use three methodologies to examine evidence for crop rotation and other elements of the ‘mouldboard plough package’ in the fields supplying Sedgeford’s 8th and 9th c. ad malting complex. Combining evidence from FWE, carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analyses and correspondence analysis, we find evidence for all three elements of the mouldboard plough package in use at Sedgeford in this era.