Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (253 page)

At their most simple, field systems are groupings of plots established in order to graze animals and cultivate crops in a controlled way. Each plot or field is usually surrounded by a fence, hedge, or wall, the latter as often as not derived from stones collected up from clearing stones from the plot in order to facilitate cultivation. The creation of a field system implies an investment in the land, and in addition to the fields themselves there may well be infrastructure facilities such as wells, threshing floors, animal houses, folds and pens, shelters and tool stores, barns, and maybe even dwellings for those working the land. Connecting the plots will be tracks and droves of various kinds.
The arrangement of a field system, its organization, and the nature of the components within it say a lot about its origins and how it worked. In general there are two kinds of arrangement, although either can occur as an ‘open field system’ where there are few if any walls, banks, or hedges dividing the plots or as a ‘closed field system’ where the boundary works between and around plots are substantial. Closed field systems are especially common where livestock form part of the regime.
Regular field systems
have a common plan and fairly tight structure to them. Most were set out as a single operation, or at least planned in a way that could be expanded on a modular basis later if need be. The field plots are usually fairly uniform in size and shape, square and rectangular fields being common. One particular variant of the regular field system is the so-called co-axial field system where a framework comprising the long parallel boundaries forming the axis of the system are set out and then these strips, which may be several kilometres long, are infilled with cross-walls to create the field plots. Such systems began to be made during the Bronze Age in Europe, some of the best preserved being those identified by Andrew Fleming and John Collis on Dartmoor, England.
By contrast,
irregular field systems
are rarely planned: rather they develop piecemeal (irregular aggregate field systems) either by the periodic addition of new plots or the modification of what was originally a regular system. Irregular field systems tend to have curved or crooked boundaries between the plots, fields of uneven shape and size, and a high proportion of fields that can only be accessed from other fields rather than from a trackway or drove.

 
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A powerful archaeological technique to systematically sample the upper surface of cultivated or disturbed ground in an effort to locate or map the distribution and extent of archaeological sites. The basic assumption is made that the topsoil contains distinctive traces of archaeological activity—fingerprints of what has gone on in the past. In this sense the topsoil is treated as a single extensive open archaeological context. It includes material that has been deposited onto or into the topsoil from above, for example debitage from an episode of flint knapping by someone sitting on the ground. It also includes material from features underneath the topsoil that are exposed to the effects of cultivation or ground works and therefore mechanically brought into the ploughsoil. Cultivation will have mixed all these different sources of material together, and a proportion of what is in the soil will be visible on the surface.
There are two main ways of carrying out fieldwalking. The first is
line walking
, where linear transects are defined at fixed intervals and the fieldwalkers traverse each line collecting material that they see within their corridor of vision. Lines are usually divided into stints (often the stints are the same length as the gap between transects to make data processing easier) and the material recovered is bagged by line and stint. The second technique is
grid walking
, where the survey area is divided into squares and the walkers spend a fixed amount of time working in each square gathering everything they can see during the allotted search period. At the end of the allotted time the finds are bagged together and the team moves on to the next square. In both systems it is important that each sample unit (a line stint or a grid square) is treated equally, otherwise the results will be worthless. After the finds have been collected, cleaned, sorted, and identified, different categories can be mapped and patterns identified.

 
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A small model of a human or animal, usually of clay, stone, wood, or metal, whose purpose generally seems to be ceremonial, devotional, or some kind of offering to a deity.

 
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A technique used in the manufacture of jewellery in which gold, electrum, or silver wire is bent into shape and then soldered onto an area of metal that is to be decorated. The technique was first developed by Sumerian craftsmen in the 3rd millennium
bc
.

 
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A fortified promontory settlement in the southwestern part of the island excavated by R. Grosjean in the 1950s. The main feature of the site is a Bronze Age
TORRE
or tower. Circular in plan and constructed in dry-stone walling, it is set with in a walled enclosure which also contains oval houses. It dates to the mid 2nd millennium
bc
, and incorporates fragments of statue menhirs showing men armed with bronze daggers and swords.
[Rep.: R. Grosjean , 1961,
Filitosa et son contexte archéologique dans la Vallée du Taravo
. Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres]

 
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