Discussion

The ‘mouldboard plough package’ at Sedgeford?

Results presented above are here synthesised and contextualised as part of the story of agriculture in 8th and 9th c. ad England. We consider each element of the mouldboard plough package in turn.

Extensification

As noted above, across England and beyond, there was a marked tendency in the 7th to 9th c. ad for farmers to expand cereal production. The FWE ‘intensity’ model reveals that crops from the Sedgeford malting complex were cultivated extensively. This accords with evidence from isotopic analysis for low δ15N values, indicating crops were grown in low manuring regimes. As noted above, both the wild herbivore baseline and Bogaard et al. (2013) manuring ‘bands’ used here as reference points to assess the level of soil manuring indicated by results from stable nitrogen isotope analyses must, for differing reasons, be treated with some caution. However, the low soil fertility indicated by the evidence from FWE supports our conclusion that Sedgeford’s was a low manuring regime.

Mouldboard plough

The disturbance discriminant analysis suggests high levels of disturbance at Sedgeford, consistent with use of a mouldboard plough (Hamerow et al. 2020; Bogaard et al. 2022). Mouldboard ploughing of the soil around Sedgeford (bringing nutrients for plant growth to the surface) may have been a strategy used by local farmers to compensate for the soil’s low fertility. Faulkner (2022) presents additional evidence for mouldboard plough use at Sedgeford, including plough marks on malting complex features. By the ad 1086 Domesday survey, the settlement at Sedgeford is associated with five plough teams (Faulkner 2022). Evidence for high levels of disturbance, consistent with mouldboard plough use, at 8th and 9th c. ad Sedgeford reflects a trend revealed at several early medieval sites, including Stafford (West Midlands) and Lyminge (Kent) (Bogaard et al. 2022).

Crop rotation

Evidence in an archaeobotanical assemblage for different crops being cultivated in similar environmental conditions is consistent with crop rotation (Hamerow et al. 2025, pp 104–138). Hamerow et al. (2025, pp 106–108) have outlined a set of criteria for distinguishing between samples comprising crops cultivated separately (as a single, unmixed crop without rotation), together as a mixed crop (such as a maslin) without rotation, or in (two or three-course) rotation, respectively (Table 6). We address these in turn.

Category | Mixed crop | 2-course rotation | 3-course rotation | Separate cultivation
(a) |  |  |  | 
Crop carbon and nitrogen stable isotope values | Compatible | Compatible | Compatible | Incompatible
Disturbance levels | Unclear | High | High | Unclear
Crop sowing times | Compatible | Compatible or contrasting | Contrasting | Compatible or contrasting
Cereal composition | Mixed | Mixed or pure | Mixed or pure | Pure
(b) |  |  |  | 
Crop carbon and nitrogen stable isotope values | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ×
Disturbance levels | ? | ✓ | ✓ | ?
Crop sowing times | × | ✓ | ✓ | ✓
Cereal composition | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ×

First, results reveal that malting complex crops have compatible carbon and nitrogen stable isotope values (i.e. similar mean values for carbon, and for nitrogen, respectively, both within and across all features). This is consistent with mixed cropping, two-course or three-course crop rotation but excludes separate cultivation. Secondly, disturbance levels for Sedgeford’s crops are high; two- or three-course rotation is particularly associated with high disturbance. Evidence for crop sowing times as revealed through correspondence analysis suggests autumn or spring sowing of particular crops, consistent with crop rotation. Finally, crop deposits from across the malting complex are consistently mixed. It is possible that grains of different crops were mixed post-harvest, purposely for malting. This would not affect our conclusions concerning the cultivation of crops recovered at Sedgeford either separately, as a mixed crop or in rotation (Table 6b). In sum: the Sedgeford material is consistent with a dominant farming regime in fields supplying the malting complex of two- or three-course crop rotation, but not with mixed cropping or separate crop cultivation. Clear associations of particular weed seeds with certain cereal taxa in the assemblage (Fallopia convolvulus with wheat, and Agrostemma githago with rye) are also both consistent with crop rotation and inconsistent with the ‘maslin hypothesis’ (mixed cropping).

Variability in δ15N values implies that grains were cultivated in heterogeneous conditions – in several fields, a single field in successive seasons or a single field with heterogenous conditions. One type of crop husbandry system involving ‘single fields with heterogenous conditions’ in use at Sedgeford could have been open field farming, with crops cultivated in ‘strips’ (selions) differentially manured by different farmers, and using a system of crop rotation. However, evidence for ‘classic’ open field farming systems generally post-dates the 7th to 9th c. ad, and systems are concentrated in England’s ‘Central Province’. Classic open field farming is thus an unlikely explanation for isotopic trends at 8th and 9th c. ad, East Anglian, Sedgeford (Thirsk 1964, p 23; Hall 2014, pp 2–3; Williamson 2022).

If systematic crop rotation (though likely not an ‘open field’ system) were occurring at 8th and 9th c. ad Sedgeford, this would be remarkably early, though perhaps not unprecedented. There is suggestion of patterning in crop sowing times in correspondence analyses for the assemblage from West Fen Road, Ely (Cambs), dated ca. ad 720–1220, whilst isotopic results from Mildenhall (Suffolk) and Holmer (Herefordshire), both dated ca. ad 770–880, are compatible with systematic rotation (Hamerow et al. 2025, pp 118–119, 131).

Sedgeford’s place in the long agricultural ‘revolution’

Archaeologists and historians have long been eager to identify ‘revolutionary’ change within their own period of interest (Williamson 2022). FeedSax research suggests that, while the 7th to 9th c. ad saw significant innovations, no single period in medieval England witnessed ‘revolutionary’ agricultural transformation (Hamerow 2022): if the medieval era saw a revolution in English agriculture, it was a ‘long’ one (Hamerow et al. 2025). Not until the 10th to 11th c. ad is there persuasive evidence for widespread systematic crop rotation and mouldboard plough use, although these are earlier evidenced at some sites from the 8th c. ad onwards (Hamerow 2022).

The FeedSax three-fold ‘mouldboard plough package’ is a helpful framework for considering changes, or lack thereof, in medieval agriculture (McKerracher and Hamerow 2022). We have found at least tentative evidence in the malting complex assemblage for each element of this ‘package’ in fields supplying 8th and 9th c. ad Sedgeford.

The presence of a multi-kiln malting complex at Sedgeford is part of the emerging picture of renewed construction of specialised grain processing (e.g. watermills, corn-dryers and malting kilns) and storage features from the 7th to 9th c. ad in England, for the first time since the Romano–British era (Hamerow 2012, pp 151–152). Further, the richness of crop remains from the malting complex is consistent with a quantitative trend to sites with rich crop assemblages from the 7th c. (McKerracher 2016, 2018, 2019). Each trend implies increased arable production.

The assemblage moreover exhibits crop diversification; this goes hand in hand with growth in arable surpluses through careful matching of crop choices to local environmental conditions (McKerracher 2018, p 120). The unusual abundance of rye in the malting complex suggests such ‘careful matching’: rye was generally a minor crop in Anglo-Saxon England (Hagen 2006, p 38; Comeau and Burrow 2021), but there are indications of geographic foci for rye cultivation in parts of East Anglia in the 7th to 9th c. ad in regions of well-drained soils, to which rye is well adapted (Murphy 1985; Rippon et al. 2015, p 172; McKerracher 2018, p 105). For other potential factors influencing the selection of rye as the malting complex’s major crop, see Caroe (2022a). Our research suggests that, if an ‘agricultural revolution’ can in any way be claimed to have taken place from the 7th c. ad in England, Sedgeford was a part of it.