Basingstoke: a medieval town, c.1000–c.1600 / Cheltenham before the spa

Abstract

as opposed to scientific thought or managerial efficiency, and the role of non-human actors. At one level, non-human actors are also central to the book. This is as much an exploration of ideas and theories as it is a history of landscape. It views its source evidence – documents and field remains, buildings and landscape – through the prism of ‘Actor Network Theory’ less commonly encountered in the study of the British post-medieval period than of Scandinavian prehistory), and thereby seeks to use those post-postmodern perspectives to reveal the complexity of the accumulation of daily decision and long-term processes that wrought the transformations of ‘enclosure’. Those with small appetites for such theoretical scaffolding are not required to read it as such, however, because the argument is alsofirmly rooted in analysis of rich estate documentation and (though to a lesser extent) field evidence, illuminated by a plethora of detailed maps.