The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850 by Brian Fagan Page A

unrelentingly harsh. Six
decades earlier, in 1245, a Winchester farm worker who survived childhood diseases had an average life expectancy of twenty-four years. Excavations in medieval cemeteries paint a horrifying picture of health problems resulting from brutal work regimes. Spinal deformations from the
hard labor of plowing, hefting heavy grain bags, and scything the harvest
are commonplace. Arthritis affected nearly all adults. Most adult fisherfolk suffered agonizing osteoarthritis of the spine from years of heavy
boatwork and hard work ashore. The working routines of fourteenthcentury villagers revolved around the never-changing rhythm of the seasons, of planting and harvest. The heat and long dry spells of summer were a constant struggle against weeds that threatened to choke off the
growing crops. The frantically busy weeks of harvest time saw villagers
bent to the scythe and sickle and teams of threshers winnowing the precious grain. The endless round of medieval household and village never
ceased, and the human cost in constant, slow-moving toil was enormous. Yet despite the unending work, village diets were never quite adequate, and malnutrition was commonplace. Local food shortages were a
reality of life, assuaged by reliance on relatives and manorial lords or on
the charity of religious houses. Most farmers lived from harvest to harvest on crop yields that at the best of times were far below modern levels.

    Both archaeology and historical records provide portraits of medieval
village life, but few are as complete as that from Wharram Percy, a deserted village in northeast England. Forty years of research have revealed a
long-established settlement that mirrors many villages of the day. Iron
Age farmers lived at Wharram Percy more than 2,000 years ago. At least
five Roman farms flourished here. By the sixth century, Saxon families
dwelt in their place. Scattered farming settlements gave way to a more
compact village between the ninth and twelfth centuries, which was replanned at least twice. The Medieval Warm Period was good to Wharram
Percy, when the settlement entered its heyday. The population grew considerably, the hectarage under cultivation expanded dramatically. The
compact village became a large settlement with its own church, two
manor houses and three rows of peasant houses, each with its own croft
(enclosure) built around a central, wedge-shaped green. The peasants
lived in thatched long houses, their roofs supported by pairs of timbers
known as crucks, with flimsy walls that were replaced at regular intervals.
Each building had three parts: an inner room for sleeping, sometimes
used as a dairy, a main living area with central hearth, and a third space
used as a cattle byte, or for some other farming purpose. (Long houses
were common in Medieval villages everywhere, although architecture and
village layout varied greatly between Scandinavia and the Alps.) Wharram
Percy was largely self-sufficient, a prosperous community in its heyday.
But the bountiful days of the thirteenth century were long fled from
memory when the village was finally abandoned in the sixteenth century.
    The self-sufficiency of European villages extends deep into the past, to
long before the Romans imposed the Pax Romana on Gaul and Britannia just before the time of Christ. A millennium later, life still revolved around
the manor house and the farm, the monastery and small market towns.
Tens of thousands of parish churches formed a network of territorial authority at the village level, where, for all the political changes and land
ownership controversies, the parish priest remained a figure of respect. But
times were changing as new commercial and political interests emerged.
By 1250, a tapestry of growing cities and towns linked by tracks, water ways and trade routes lay superimposed on the rural landscape. Walled
castles and cities rose at strategic locations, creating oases of safety in troubled