Abstract
Medieval crops are depicted in illuminated manuscripts, mentioned in medieval texts and found in excavations. Only texts and archaeobotanical finds provide names. Both sources suffer from their own biases and a comparison shows that they need not agree. The seeds and fruits retrieved during excavations reveal that soil is an important factor. Crops raised on sandy soils differ from those on loess soils, at least in the area under discussion: the northern part of the realm of the Franks. The kind of government seems to have been less important. There is almost no difference between the Merovingian-Carolingian period and the following period of less central power. During the entire period under review a free three-course crop rotation is assumed to have prevailed.
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Acknowledgements
I thank the colleagues from the University of Groningen, and especially H. Woldring, for giving me access to some unpublished material from Douai
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Bakels, C.C. Crops produced in the southern Netherlands and northern France during the early medieval period: a comparison. Veget Hist Archaeobot 14, 394–399 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-005-0067-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-005-0067-x