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The open-field system was the prevalent agricultural system in much of Europe during the Middle Ages and lasted into the 20th century in parts of western Europe, Russia, Iran and Turkey.〔Keddie, Nicki R. ''Iran. Religion, Politics and Society: Collected Essays'' London: Routledge, 1980, pp. 186–187〕 Under the open-field system, each manor or village had two or three large fields, usually several hundred acres each, which were divided into many narrow strips of land. The strips or selions were cultivated by individuals or peasant families, often called tenants or serfs. The holdings of a manor also included woodland and pasture areas for common usage and fields belonging to the lord of the manor and the church. The farmers customarily lived in individual houses in a nucleated village with a much larger manor house and church nearby. The open-field system necessitated co-operation among the inhabitants of the manor. The Lord of the Manor, his officials, and a Manorial court administered the manor and exercised jurisdiction over the peasantry. The Lord levied rents and required the peasantry to work on his personal lands, called a demesne.〔Astill, Grenville and Grant, Annie, eds. ''The Countryside of Medieval England'' Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988, pp.23, 64〕 In medieval times, little land was owned outright. Instead the lord had rights given him by the king and the tenant rented land from the lord. Lords demanded rents, often ruinous, and labour from the tenants, but the tenants had firm user rights to cropland and common land and those rights were passed down from generation to generation. A medieval lord could not evict a tenant nor hire labour to replace him without legal cause. Most tenants likewise were not free without penalty to depart the manor for other locations or occupations. The rise of capitalism and the concept of land as a commodity to be bought and sold led to the demise of the open-field system.〔Kulikoff, Allan ''From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers'' Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000, p. 11〕 The open-field system was gradually replaced over several centuries by private ownership of land, especially after the 15th century in the process known as enclosure in England. France, Germany, and other northern European countries had systems similar to England, although open fields generally endured longer on the continent. Some elements of the open-field system were practised by early settlers in the New England region of the United States.〔Ault, W. O. ''Open-Field Farming in Medieval England'' London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1972, pp. 77–78〕 ==Description== The most visible characteristic of the open-field system was that the arable land belonging to a manor was divided into many long narrow furlongs for cultivation. The fields of cultivated land were unfenced, hence the name ''open''-field system. Each tenant of the manor cultivated several strips of land scattered around the manor. The village of Elton, Cambridgeshire is representative of a medieval open-field manor in England. The manor, whose Lord was an abbot from a nearby monastery, had 13 "hides" of arable land of six virgates each. The acreage of a hide and virgate varied, but at Elton a hide was . A virgate was . Thus, the total of arable land amounted to . The abbot's demesne land consisted of three hides plus of meadow and of pasture. The remainder of the land was cultivated by 113 tenants who lived in a village on the manor. Counting spouses, children, and other dependents, plus landless people the total population resident in the manor village was probably 500 to 600.〔Gies, Frances and Joseph ''Life in a Medieval Village'' New York: Harper and Row, 1990, pp 31, 42〕 The abbot also owned two water mills for grinding grain, a fulling mill for finishing cloth, and a millpond on the manor. The village contained a church, a manor house, a village green, and the sub-manor of John of Elton, a rich farmer who cultivated one hide of land and had tenants of his own. The tenants' houses lined a road rather than being grouped in a cluster. Some of the village houses were fairly large, long by wide. Others were only long and wide. All were insubstantial and required frequent reconstruction. Most of the tenants' houses had outbuildings and an animal pen with a larger area, called a croft, of about one-half acre (.2 ha), enclosed for a garden and grazing for animals.〔Gies, pp. 34–36〕 The tenants on the manor did not have equal holdings of land. About one-half of adults living on a manor had no land at all and had to work for larger landholders for their livelihood. A survey of 104 13th-century manors in England found that, among the landholding tenants, 45 percent had less than . To survive they also had to work for larger landowners. 22 percent of tenants had a virgate of land (which varied in size between and and 31 percent had one-half virgate.〔McCloskey, Donald N. "The open fields of England: rent, risk, and the rate of interest, 1300–1815" in ''Markets in History: Economic Studies of the Past'', ed. David W. Galenson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp 6–7〕 To rely on the land for a livelihood a tenant family needed at least . The land of a typical manor in England and other countries was subdivided into two or three large fields. Non-arable land was allocated to common pasture land or ''waste'' where the villagers would graze their livestock throughout the year, woodland for pigs and timber, and also some private fenced land (paddocks, orchards and gardens), called ''closes''. The ploughed fields and the meadows were used for livestock grazing when fallowed or after the grain was harvested. One of the two or three fields was fallowed each year to recover soil fertility. The fields were divided into parcels called furlongs. The furlong was further subdivided into long, thin strips of land called selions or ridges. Selions were distributed among the farmers of the village, the manor, and the church. A family might possess about 70 selions totalling about scattered around the fields. The scattered nature of family holdings ensured that families each received a ration of both good and poor land and minimised risk. If some selions were unproductive, others might be productive. Ploughing techniques created a landscape of ridge and furrow, with furrows between ridges dividing individual holdings and aiding drainage. While selions were cultivated by individuals or families, the right of pasture on fallowed fields, land unsuitable for cultivation, and harvested fields was held in common with rules to prevent overgrazing enforced by the community.〔"Medieval fields in their many forms" ''British Archaeology'' Issue no. 33, April 1998; Ault, W. O. "Open-Field Farming in Medieval England'' London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1972, pp. 15–16〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「open field system」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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