Misplaced Faith? Medieval Pottery and Fieldwalking

The Shapwick project, Somerset, began in 1989 as a ten-year, multi-disciplinary landscape investigation focused particularly upon the evolution of early and late medieval settlement patterns. One of the aims of the project is to examine appropriate methodologies for the investigation of rural historic landscapes. This paper considers the efficacy of fieldwalking as a means of identifying archaeological monuments and land-use for the medieval period.